Виллем ван Мирис: Жизнь и творчество лейденского живописца

Dutch painter

Willem van Mieris (3 June 166226 January 1747) was an 18th century painter from the Northern Netherlands.

Willem van Mieris was a painter, sculptor and etcher active in Leiden. He was born in Leiden and studied under his father Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635–1682), who was a successful genre painter. Willem had a reasonably successful career, being supported by a few patrons who commissioned and collected various of his works. His oeuvre consists mostly of genre and portraiture, with some landscape painting, as well as some sculptures. Van Mieris' style was that of the fijnschilders (painters in the "fine manner"), and his genre works, especially later in his career, depicted scenes from upper class society. He set out to uphold his father's reputation as a Leiden fijnschilder. The Leiden fine painters produced a small scale of mostly genre paintings or portraits with high attention to detail, which was made popular by Frans' master Gerrit Dou (1613–1675). Frans' superb skills as a painter rubbed off on his son and his influence can be seen in technique, subject matter, and style. He finished what was left incomplete on his father's demise. Such a family background in art, good relationships with wealthy collectors and patrons, and apprenticeships with successful 17th century masters seems to have made the choice of profession easier in families such as the Van Mierises. Willem, Jan, and Frans II, all direct descendants of the famous seventeenth century fine painter Frans I van Mieris, were bound for prestigious positions in the city, resulting in steady income from the commissions from affluent citizens. Painters like Willem van Mieris reused not only their own figures, but also those present in paintings by the masters of the previous generations. This was again due to the necessity of pleasing the few patrons and collectors, who greatly admired the works of artists such as Gerard Dou, a member of the first generation of fijnschilders. Willem van Mieris explicitly refers to Dou in two different paintings the subject of which is almost directly borrowed from the eminent master. In this respect, Van Mieris proved to be discreet enough to carefully choose which elements to take from other painters' works in order not to be accused of plagiarism, which was already an issue at the time. In fact, specific guidelines had already been established about how to refer to paintings by previous masters without ending up with mere copies of their work, which were obviously despised as signs of the painter's incapability of producing a work on his own. One of the major characteristics of Willem van Mieris' artistic style is his idealization of the female nude. Van Mieris' idea of beauty in genre paintings is deeply rooted in and modeled after his studies of classical sculpture. Between the years 1669 and 1702, Willem van Mieris made at least thirteen drawings on parchment modeled after van Bossuit's sculptures, believed to have been produced as works of art rather than preparatory studies for his history paintings. In van Mieris' painting Flora, which currently resides in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, it is suggested that Agneta served as the model. In this painting, van Mieris disguises his wife as Flora, the ancient Roman goddess of flowers, fertility and spring. The inclusion of peonies helps signify feminine beauty and fertility, which is appropriate given the context of the painting's execution taking place only one year before Willem's and Agneta's wedding. A similar face, suggested to be modeled after Agneta's, reappears in many of van Mieris' early works, including Allegory of Arrogance from 1684, Old Man Seducing a Young Woman from 1683, Artemis Holding an Arrow from 1686, and Woman with a Bird Cage (Lesbia) from 1687. In his mansion in Leiden he devoted three separate rooms exclusively for the exhibition of his huge collection of paintings and other rooms contained more paintings. No relationship between the two patrons has been established, except for an archival document from the eighteenth century, which testifies Van Wassenaer's intention to buy Dou's Grocer's Shop. Allard de la Court, who inherited most of his father's collection, describes Van Wassenaer's efforts to acquire the painting at a hefty price. This shows how much Van Wassenaer appreciated Dou's Grocer's Shop and it is possible that Van Mieris made his own version modelled closely after Dou's to please his patron. Another collection worth mentioning is the one by Sir Matthew Decker (1669–1749). This Dutchman emigrated to London in 1702, where he made a fortune as a banker and director of the East India Company. He was a skilled buyer of art and bought paintings in the Netherlands to ship them across to England. By the end of his life, he amassed a good collection, including paintings by Dou and Willem van Mieris.

Hieronymous van der Mij, born in 1687 in Leiden, was one of Willem van Mieris' pupils. Van der Mij painted mostly portraits, borrowing from van Mieris' style. His portraits were highly regarded because of how much they resembled the sitters, who were usually high status individuals including professors or regents of the armhouse. Willem van Mieris also took care of training his son Frans in the art of painting: when the old artist was forced to retire from active work due to his progressive blindness, he passed on his studio to his son, and the two consistently worked together. However, Frans van Mieris the Younger was not nearly as successful as his father and grandfather: only very few of his works are known to us, and he never managed to gain popularity among collectors. Some of his paintings were even refused by the commissioner, as happened with the German prince of Mecklenburg Schwerin, who decided not to accept Frans's Diana bathing (executed in close collaboration with Willem) due to its poor quality. After these unsatisfactory results, Frans van Mieris the Younger soon quit painting to dedicate himself to antiquarian collections: he was a highly esteemed expert in numismatics, a field he wrote several renowned treatises on.

In Willem van Mieris' painting of Bathsheba from 1708, Bathsheba is depicted in the nude sitting before King David. In October 1707, while van Mieris worked on Bathsheba, ten works by the sculptor van Bossuit were sold from the collection of van Mieris' patron Petronella Oortmans de la Court, bringing attention to the sculptures of van Bossuit and influencing van Mieris's work. When comparing van Mieris's Bathsheba to two of his drawings that he produced after van Bossuit's sculptures, namely Venus and Cupid and Diana and Callisto, the influence that van Bossuit's sculptures played on Bathsheba becomes evident. In van Mieris's drawing Venus and Cupid, Venus's facial profile shows a strong resemblance to Bathsheba's. In the painter's drawing Diana and Callisto, the position of Diana's body is also similar to that of Bathsheba's. Consequently, it is believed that Bathsheba's graceful pose and gesture, characteristic of van Mieris's trademarked idealized female nude, is directly borrowed from van Bossuit's sculptures. In Willem van Mieris's Lute Player from 1711, the woman depicted in the painting strikingly resembles Bathsheba, which is representative of the painter's repetition of figures. In Willem van Mieris's painting Granida and Daifilo from 1697, he depicts a scene from P. C. Hooft's pastoral play Granida, a common choice of subject matter in Dutch 17th century painting. In this painting, van Mieris "combines the minuteness of his Leyden School with a more international late 17th century classicism". Granida's headgear, the shepherdess's straw hat, as well as Daifilo's tiger skin are suggested to allude to the theatre. The painting was once part of the Winkler Collection at Leipzig in 1768, but was recorded for the last time when it was passed through a London sale in 1900. Van Mieris's painting Le Thé is mostly to be inspired Gerard de Lairesse's idea to depict a tea party in his book Groot Schilderboek (1707), in which he translates the laws of international classicism into practical rules for artist's to apply in their studios. Le Thé depicts a scene of a young woman offering a friend a cup of tea, while the friend refuses to accept the tea as she must leave. While van Mieris generally followed the rules for genre painting outlined by De Lairesse, he did not share De Lairesse's belief that genre painting should be as similar to history painting as possible. An additional difference between De Lairesse and van Mieris is that van Mieris eliminates all traces of psychological tension and conflict between the figures, as well as all sense of narration and progression of time.

Once part of the prized collection of Allard de la Court, De Rarekiek was commissioned by de la Court for 1000 guilders. It took a different, more modern approach to the concept of the quack or salesman who is exhibiting his wares, which was a common theme at the time, by replacing the salesman with a man showing off a raree show. Van Mieris called the painting "'t Fraai Curieus" ("the fine curiosity), using an expression that was common in the 18th century to refer to travelling minstrels. This painting was one of the few paintings where Van Mieris was trying to renew his repertoire of kitchen scenes and shop interiors.

This painting illustrates the story that Joost van den Vondel wrote about Iempsar, wife of Joseph's patron Potiphar, attempting to seduce the pious Joseph. The scene depicts Joseph rejecting and leaving her. The figures are elegant, but not dramatic, and the classical composition seems to highlight Van Mieris' shortcoming to illustrate the dramatic nature of the story. However, the work was praised by contemporaries.

This painting was started by another painter, Pieter van Singelandt, but was finished by Willem van Mieris after his death. Typical for Van Mieris' work is that the woman is dressed in a rather fashionable manner, creating a striking contrast between the elegant lady in the classical interior and her feeding the cat, an act which befits a maid better. The painting bears an amorous meaning; the woman shows that a thief easily changes into a prey near her. If a man wants to steal a kiss, he will lose his heart.

This scene in the shop allows Van Mieris to display his skill at emulating reality in a large variety of subjects. Van Mieris details the different materials, creating a highly lifelike picture, but from a distance they seem to not work very well together. The female figure is rather stiff and doll like, and the background echoes this in its mechanical nature, which leaves nothing to the imagination. This painting was well received by contemporaries, and it was viewed as natural and artistic.

It is not well known that Willem van Mieris worked with multiple media: not only painting. In fact he also worked as a designer and molder of sculptures. His career as a sculptor was, however, a short one: he only worked for a few years at the beginning of the 18th century. Nevertheless, he still did a good job that surpass his paintings in quality. The only work that has come down to us are four vases commissioned by his patron Pieter de la Court van der Voort, which were designed for the garden of his Leiden mansion. The De la Court family had an avid interest in gardening (they introduced the pineapple to Europe) and art, which explains the extensive attention for decoration of the garden. Eleven preparatory drawings for the four vases made by Willem van Mieris have been mentioned in an inventory of the collection of Pieter de la Court's son Allard and two decades later in the auction catalogue of his widow Catherina de la Court Backer. Willemijn Fock was able to identify six of these drawings and noticed that four vases decorating the gardens of Windsor Castle in England were signed "W. van Mieris inv[enit] et fecit" and Roman numerals state the year of production. After comparison of the drawings and the actual vases, there was no doubt that these were commissioned by Pieter de la Court and to later be acquired by the British royal family in 1825. The four vases portray the four seasons and the shape of the vases are classically inspired on the Medici vase and the Borghese vase, but also after the vases of the Versailles palace. The seasonal division is quite traditional, going back to classical literature. Willem van Mieris is likely to have read the translation of Cesare Ripa's Iconologia and represented spring with sacrifice to Flora and Priapus, summer with the bath of Diana and a sacrifice to Ceres, autumn with a parade for Bacchus, and winter with Venus ordering weapons for Aeneas and warming herself to a fire after Ceres and Bacchus leave her. Willem van Mieris always carefully prepared his paintings in order to find the right composition and to study certain elements. Two of his spring drawings can be considered the most carefully done and may be the best work in his large oeuvre of drawings. For the vases, as a source of inspiration he used both his own work and the works of others, both Dutch and Italian, that was brought to him by De la Court especially for this project. He probably used works of Rembrandt and the Flemish Francis van Bossuit. The drawings and actual vases are not a perfect match: the composition differs at times especially by the omittance of figures or details (often because of lack of space or because of lack of space or because the overall picture or story looked better without). Willem van Mieris was the designer and molder of the reliefs. He collaborated with his friend Filips van der Mij, who was responsible for the casting, and his son Hieronimus van der Mij would later study under van Mieris. The feet and lids of the vases were made by Giovanni Battista Lurago under the supervision of van Mieris. Allard de la Court also commissioned van Mieris a fountain piece, again in collaboration with Filips van der Mij. The sculpture has been destroyed, but the receipts of the purchase give a detailed description of the work: Hercules strangling the head of a serpent while holding it up. The water sprayed out of the serpent's mouth. However, the fountain has not come down to us, making the vases the only pieces of sculpture by Willem van Mieris that we can admire today.

Willem van Mieris succeeded in achieving remarkable popularity in the Netherlands, with his paintings hanging in the collections of many eminent members of the Dutch new aristocracy as well as of foreign noblemen such as the Duke of Mecklenburg Schwerin. However, his reputation was not held in as high esteem when it comes to later art critics: Dezallier d'Argenville, though recognizing the ability of Van Mieris as a painter, states in his Abrégé that he was never able to match the level of his father, Frans van Mieris the Elder, whose fame was still celebrated in Europe when Willem painted his major works. This opinion was reflected in the foreign market as well, as this anecdote describes; Pieter de la Court van der Voort (1664–1739) was travelling through France in 1700, intending to sell a work by Willem van Mieris. He covered up the artist's signature to hide the fact that it was a work by Willem, not his father Frans van Mieris, as the value of the painting would be drastically lowered when it would be known that it was the son who painted it. Much harsher is the opinion of Théophile Thoré, the major critic of Dutch art in the 19th century: in his Musées de la Hollande, a catalogue of the most important works of art exposed in the Netherlands, the French connoisseur blatantly despised Willem van Mieris, labeling his paintings as "harsh, cold, piddling, and unsurpassably insipid". All things considered, no other kind of statement could be expected from Thoré on a painter such as Van Mieris: the Dutch painter embodied the new, classicizing tendency of Dutch art in the 18th century, a tendency that Thoré viewed as the death and destruction of the Golden Age. In fact, the French critic idealized Dutch 17th century painting as the most complete expression of freedom and independence ever achieved by European art, with Rembrandt and Vermeer as icons of a popular, real and truthful way of painting. On the other hand, the Leiden fijnschilders and the Italianate painters were regarded as traitors of this exceptional artistic movement, being still imprisoned by the old and aristocratic canons of classicizing beauty.