This is one of my all time favorite portraits. I felt that, in honor of Labor Day here in the US, it might be nice to take a second look at this wonderful piece. I worked as a bookkeeper for many years and loved the work.
As a retired bookkeeper, I was pleased to come across a painting portraying a woman working at that craft in the seventeenth century. The Account Keeper was painted in 1656, when Nicolaes Maes was at the peak of his craft.
What I particularly like about this picture is the subject: a woman, middle-aged, and competent. Modestly dressed, she is seated at an ornate desk and is working in a place of commerce, as is shown by the map on the wall behind her. On the wall to the right of her, a clipboard hangs, with the artist’s signature on it. Maes liked to place his signature in unexpected places in his paintings, making it an unobtrusive part of the scene.
This is a well-executed painting, and the balance is significant. The accountant is small, placed to the left of center, while the world map over her is large. A ring with several large keys hangs on a nail beside her, the keys to the safe, cash boxes, and her file drawers.
The placement of the map and the inclusion of the keys is important. The company whose accounts she so meticulously keeps is seen to have transoceanic connections, and wealth worth keeping under lock and key. These clues show us the company she works for is rich, and her dress shows she has a good, if modest, income from them for her labors.
The way she is shown in this painting is, I suspect, how she sees herself. She is dedicated, quietly keeping the numbers straight, thereby ensuring the company’s financial success.
It’s unusual to see a woman in this time period depicted as being engaged in any tasks other than those of a wife/mother, farm laborer, domestic servant, or prostitute. Education for women was limited, but employment and business opportunities for women did exist. However, other than posing for family portraits, these women are rarely shown at work even by the more socially conscious genre artists.
Nicolaes Maes was unusual in that he painted women at work in all stages of their lives.
About the Artist:
From Wikipedia: Nicolaes Maes, also known as Nicolaes Maas (January 1634 – November 24, 1693 (buried)) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of genre and portraits. In about 1648 he went to Amsterdam, where he entered Rembrandt‘s studio. Before his return to Dordrecht in 1653 Maes painted a few Rembrandtesque genre pictures, with life-size figures and in a deep glowing scheme of colour, like the Reverie at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Card Players at the National Gallery, and the Children with a Goat Carriage. So closely did his early style resemble that of Rembrandt, that the last-named picture, and other canvases in the Leipzig and Budapest galleries and in the collection of Lord Radnor, were or are still ascribed to Rembrandt.
In his best period, from 1655 to 1665, Maes devoted himself to domestic genre on a smaller scale, retaining to a great extent the magic of colour he had learnt from Rembrandt. Only on rare occasions did he treat scriptural subjects, as in Hagar’s Departure, which has been ascribed to Rembrandt. His favorite subjects were women spinning, or reading the Bible, or preparing a meal. He had a particular fascination with the subject of lacemaking and made almost a dozen versions on this subject.
While he continued to reside in Dordrecht until 1673, when he settled in Amsterdam, he visited or even lived in Antwerp between 1665 and 1667. His Antwerp period coincides with a complete change in style and subject. He devoted himself almost exclusively to portraiture, and abandoned the intimacy and glowing color harmonies of his earlier work for a careless elegance which suggests the influence of Van Dyck. So great indeed was the change, that it gave rise to the theory of the existence of another Maes, of Brussels. His registered pupils were Justus de Gelder, Margaretha van Godewijk, Jacob Moelaert, and Johannes Vollevens.[1] Maes died in Amsterdam.
Credits and Attributions:
Nicolaes Maes, The Account Keeper, ca. 1656, [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Wikipedia contributors, “Nicolaes Maes,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nicolaes_Maes&oldid=815679835 (accessed July 12, 2018).
I do this by having my daily prompts all set out in advance in the outline. Then I set myself in front of my computer and wing it for at least two hours.
Lee French, my co-municipal liaison, has given us great advice over the years. One thing she starts us with is something writers usually don’t think of until they have to: genre and keywords.
Other things to consider are point of view and narrative tense. Who can tell the story most effectively, a protagonist, a sidekick, or an unseen witness? And will it be written in the 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person limited, or 3rd person omniscient? What narrative time will the story be set in, the present or past tense?
I always give the proto novel a working title that becomes the storyboard’s label. The book I am writing is set in the world of Neveyah, and so it belongs with the rest of the books set in that world. The workbook is labeled Neveyah.xls, and the spreadsheet that I will be working on will be labeled “Ivan’s Story II,” as I currently don’t have a title.
Preplanning takes advantage of all the pertinent ideas I have at the outset and offers me a jumping-off point. Like a connect the dots game, I know how to write the story that happens between and because of each event. Having this knowledge helps me take the story to its conclusion, allowing me to have the full story arc written in thirty days.
If you haven’t heard of this before, it’s a worldwide event that happens in November. Each year thousands of people in all parts of the world dedicate themselves to writing a 50,000-word narrative in only thirty days.
The first roadblock happens when reality sets in and the writers realize that it is work.
But by November 30th last year, 70 writers out of the 175 in our region had made it to the 50,000-word mark, 3 made it to above 80,000, and 1 exceeded 100,000 words.
But I got side-tracked. On day 5, I thought about an artifact’s origin that has a role in my still-unfinished novel. 80,000 words later, that bunny trail had become a novel, The Ruins of Abeyon.
Succeeding in writing even a short story gives many authors the confidence to continue. In their case, NaNoWriMo is about writing and completing a novel they had wanted to write for years, something that had been in the back of their minds for all their lives.
Over the next few weeks, we will focus on laying the groundwork for our novels so that we will be ready and able to write when November comes. Much of what I will be discussing has emerged from our experience and comes from my co-ML Lee’s prep work as much as from mine.
My parents also had bought 
Then, in 1987, my father bought me a secondhand 
I’m proud to admit that my literary influences can be traced back to dragons, booze, elves, 
I shared what I wrote with other people and got feedback, some good, some bad. I learned from it all and kept trying. I bought books on the craft of writing.
Lee French and Jeffrey Cook co-authored the book, 
Earning a living is tough for an author, whether you go the indie or traditional route. Many writers have turned to 
Such is NaNoWriMo—you never know what will happen during that month of madness and hilarity. I’ve been participating since 2010 and a Municipal Liaison since 2012, and every year is different. Some years I can only churn out short stories and poetry; other years, I’m cursed with novels.
We booked in January, so we got our favorite condo on the beach. Some years we don’t get it, but we always have fun. My sister-in-law and her husband are in a small house a bit further toward the other end of town. The daughter with the teenagers is staying in the neighboring town of Seaside, which is more oriented to teenagers and caters to their idea of fun.
In September 1879, a third survey was ordered, this time headed by John Trewavas, whose experience included the 
Today we’re discussing how narrative time, or what we call tense, affects a reader’s perception of character development. In 
In the rewrite, we look for the code words that tell us the direction in which we want the narrative to go.
Sometimes the only way you can get into a character’s head is to write them in the first-person present tense, which happened to me with Thorn Girl. I struggled with her story for nearly six months until a member of my writing group suggested changing the narrative tense and point of view.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 