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for Willem van Mieris
Willem van Mieris
Dutch, 1662 - 1747
Painter and draughtsman, son of Frans van Mieris. He trained with his father and probably contributed to several of his later works. It is almost certain, for example, that he finished his father’s signed painting of the Holy Family (1681; priv. col., see Naumann, 1981, ii, pl. 121). The earliest examples signed and dated by Willem himself are from 1682, after which there is a large oeuvre of dated works up to the 1730s, when he became partly blind. In 1693 he joined the Leiden Guild of St Luke, for which he served as headman several times and once as dean. Around 1694, with the painters Jacob Toorenvliet (c. 1635–1719) and Karel de Moor, he founded a drawing academy in Leiden, which he and de Moor directed until 1736.
Willem’s earliest work followed the technique and subject-matter of his father’s late paintings, with the same enamel-like smoothness, harsh reflections of light, emphatic display of virtuosity in the rendering of detail and stereotyped figures. From the beginning, however, he concentrated more than his father had on history painting, including religious scenes, subjects from Classical and Renaissance literature and pastoral themes, for instance Satyrs and Nymphs (1682; Utrecht, Cent. Mus.), Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (1685; Hannover, Niedersächs. Landesmus.), Bacchus and Ariadne (1704; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister) and Rinaldo and Armida (1709; The Hague, Mauritshuis). In so doing, he applied the aesthetic ideals and rules of decorum of classical, late 17th-century art theory, in combination with the technique of the Leiden ‘fine’ painters. Most of these compositions are peopled with small figures, usually nude women, and set in palatial surroundings or in an idealized landscape. The poses of the figures are often taken from prints of Classical sculpture in the pattern-books of François Perrier and Jan de Bisschop and the work of the popular ivory-carver and sculptor Frans de Bossuit.
The majority of Willem van Mieris’s oeuvre, however, consists of genre scenes, including almost all the subjects and motifs developed by previous generations of Leiden ‘Fine’ painters, several of the earlier ones depicting elegant young women or musicians and drinkers, directly recalling paintings by his father, as in the Young Woman with an Aging Lover (1683; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), the Young Woman Setting Free a Little Bird (1687; Hamburg, Ksthalle) and the Drinking Violin-player with a Maidservant Pouring Wine (1699; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister). After the turn of the century he specialized in shops and kitchens seen through arched windows, usually with a painted low relief underneath (after Francesco Du Quesnoy or de Bossuit). These settings include saleswomen or maidservants, often counterbalanced by a man, and surrounded by a lavish display of groceries, vegetables, fish or game, such as the Kitchen Maid and Fishmonger (1713; London, N.G.) and the Woman with Boy in a Grocery Shop (1717; The Hague, Mauritshuis). In form, these follow the niche pictures by Gerrit Dou (e.g. the Poultry Shop, London, N.G.), but in character they are completely different, with cool colours, rather evenly spread light, highly stylized figures and a profusion of objects and minutely rendered details. From the 1720s van Mieris’s figures became more stereotyped and wooden, and he repeated the same compositional schemes, as in the Young Woman and Man in a Poultry Shop (1733; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). His technical virtuosity continued unimpaired until the end of the decade and thereafter declined.
Van Mieris was a good portraitist and also painted a number of landscapes in the style of Johannes Glauber and Jan Griffier. He was a competent draughtsman, too, as can be seen from the many surviving drawings, which include figure and compositional studies in black chalk, carefully worked-out preparatory drawings and copies of his own paintings in pencil and/or black chalk and exceptionally detailed and colourful drawings in gouache. The highly finished drawings were undoubtedly intended as independent works of art. He also made four clay models for a set of garden vases with low reliefs showing mythological scenes symbolizing the Four Seasons (Windsor Castle, Berks, Royal Col.); these are the only surviving examples of low reliefs cast after his clay models.
Van Mieris’s principal pupils were his son (3) Frans van Mieris (ii) and Hieronymus van der Mij (1678–1761), a Leiden painter of portraits, genre scenes and historical subjects. Many prominent collectors took an interest in his work, and his paintings sold for high prices. Among his most important patrons were Petronella Oortmans-De la Court (1624–1707), her much younger nephew Pieter de la Court van der Voort (1664–1739), who was an immensely wealthy cloth magnate in Leiden, and his nephew Cornelis Backer (1693–1775). Pieter de la Court van der Voort not only commissioned free compositions but also ordered copies of works by Frans van Mieris the elder and other Leiden ‘Fine’ painters and asked Willem to complete or add figures to paintings by other artists in his collection. During his lifetime many of his paintings were bought by Christoph August von Wackerbarth for the Dresden gallery of August the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. In the 18th century most important German and French collectors acquired examples of his paintings.
Eric J. Sluijter. "Mieris, van." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T057865pg2 (accessed May 8, 2012).
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