Pendant Portraits of an Elegant
Couple, 1708: Portrait of an Elegant
Man1708

Willem van Mieris(Leiden 1662 – 1747 Leiden)

signed and dated in light paint, left

oil on oval panel
19.5 x 15 cm
midpoint: “W. Van. Mieris. Fe= 1708”
WM-103.a© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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How To Cite
Aono, Junko. "Pendant Portraits of an Elegant Couple, 1708." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited
by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
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The couple in these two oval portraits represents the height of fashion inComparative Figures

the early eighteenth century, both elegant and refined. The man wears astylish long wig, a white blouse and a brown jacket with a golden buckle,
and he has gracefully draped a gray velvet mantle around his body.
Holding his right hand before his chest, he looks affectionately toward hiswife. She responds to her husband’s gaze by turning her head slightly in
his direction, though she looks directly at the viewer. She wears a white
blouse and a green satin dress adorned with a golden fringe and jewelry,and she gently holds a golden-brown shawl to cover her left shoulder. Her
dark brown hair is elegantly coiffured, with a long, flowing lock falling over
her right shoulder onto her décolleté, a style of dress derived from French
fashions that had transformed the wardrobes of wealthy citizens in theFig 1. Wax seal wax of amonogram consisting of theletters C, V, and L, affixed to thereverse of the female portrait of
WM-103.bDutch Republic by the early eighteenth century.
Although the identity of the couple remains unknown, the pair clearly
belonged to the affluent elite who were able to commission portraits from
Willem van Mieris, an artist who had already established an outstanding
reputation for himself.[1] Van Mieris had excelled in portrait painting fromthe earliest years of his career, representing stolid Dutch burghers in theirdomestic environments, as in his pendant portraits purported to represent
Samuel van Acker and his wife (WM-106.a–b), but over time his style
evolved to a more flowing manner to reflect the changing social andcultural character of the Netherlands. In the small bust-length pendant
portraits discussed here, Van Mieris depicted his sitters in an oval format,
thereby focusing his entire attention on the figures and their elegant
appearance. His refined painterly technique is particularly evident in theminute rendering of textures, such as the soft curled hair, the pleats of thethin white blouse, the beautifully draped shawls, and the golden jewelry
with precious stones. The sitters’ elegant poses and gestures,characteristic of this master at this period of his career, reflect the period’sdominant classicizing style.
This type of portrait pair usually hung together with images of relatives andancestors, as was the case with two oval portraits that Van Mieris madefor his patron Allard de la Court and his wife, Catharina Backer. Those
pendants hung together with 26 other family portraits in the dining room of
the couple’s home.[2] Such portraits were sometimes inherited bydescendants and remained within the family, but many were dispersed
over the centuries and can no longer be identified with known sitters, a fate© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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also shared by the present works.
Provenance research has recently clarified the complete history of theirownership since the nineteenth century. The red wax seals affixed to theback of both panels, which contain a monogram consisting of the letters C,
V, and L (fig 1), have been identified with the collector Christophe van Loofrom Ghent. He purchased both portraits at the auction of the collection ofCount Philippe Vilain XIIII of Brussels, held in Paris in 1857, and they werelater sold at the Van Loo sale in Paris in 1881.[3] Remarkably, the auction
catalogues of 1857 and 1881 describe the couple as Willem van Mieris
and his wife. This identification, however, is far from convincing. Thecouple hardly looks old enough to be 46 and 45 years old, respectively,
the ages of the artist and his wife in 1708, the year these portraits werepainted.[4]-Junko Aono

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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Endnotes
1. Van Mieris, for instance, made several portraits of the De la Court family, as Pieter de la
Court van der Voort was his art patron and gave him numerous commissions. A pair ofportraits of this benefactor and his wife is said to date to 1708, and the portrait of his son
Allard de la Court, mentioned in the current entry, was made in 1705; see C. Willemijn Fockand R. E. O. Ekkart, “De portretgalerij van de familie De la Court,” Jaarboek Centraal
Bureau voor Genealogie 35 (1981): 179, 181, 201, no. 17, 203, no. 21, 204, figs. 15 and 16,205, no. 23, 206, fig. 19.
2. See note 1 and T. H. Lunsingh Scheurleer, ed., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een
Leidse gracht, 6 vols. and index (Leiden, 1986–92), 2:457–58. The collection of Jhr. De laCourt, sold on 21 September 1904, contained “portraits en buste de Pieter de la Court et desa femme Sara Poelaert” (lot no. 104, copper, oval, 10.5 cm high). Hofstede de Groot
identified this portrait of Sara Poelaert with the one mentioned by Moes under no. 359. This
pair of portraits was also found in the eighteenth-century inventories of the De la Court
family, but these two paintings cannot be identified with WM-103.a–b, since the sizes ofWM-103.a–b are much larger and the supports are panel, not copper. Ernst Wilhelm Moes,
Iconographia Batava: Beredeneerde lijst van geschilderde en gebeeldhouwde portretten
van Noord-Nederlanders in vorige eeuwen , 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1905), 2:219, no. 5971;
Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch
Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith , 8 vols. (London,1907–27), translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke derhervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts , 10 vols. (Esslingen andParis, 1907–28), 10:199, nos. 358, 359.
3. Sale, Count Philippe Vilain XIIII, Paris, 2 May 1857, nos. 43, 44 [760 and 850 francs,respectively, to Van Loo]; sale, Christophe van Loo, Paris, 25 May 1881, nos. 15, 16 [1,920and 1,600 francs, respectively, to F. Hérard].
4. Van Mieris’s wife, Agneta Chapman, was born in 1663 and died in 1744. For a pair of drawn
portraits of this couple, possibly made upon the occasion of their marriage in 1684, seeAlbert J. Elen, “Willem van Mieris and His First Model: Agneta Chapman as the Morgan
Flora,” Master Drawings 47 (2009): 465, figs. 2–3.

ProvenanceCount Philippe Vilain XIIII, Brussels (his sale, Paris, 2 May 1857, nos. 43, 44 [respectively760 and 850 francs to Van Loo]).
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Christophe van Loo, Ghent (his sale, Paris, 25 May 1881, nos. 15, 16 [respectively 1,920
and 1,600 francs to F. Hérard]).
Flury Hérard (his sale, Paris, 18 November 1919, nos. 55, 56).
Monsieur G… (his sale, Drouot, Paris, 8 February 1939, nos. 47, 48).
Private collection, Paris; and by descent (sale, Christie’s, Paris, 22 June 2005, no. 42 [toSalomon Lilian B. V., Amsterdam]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

References
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke derhervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen andParis, 1907–28, 10:197, nos. 347 and 348.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained, oval, non-Baltic oak, has a horizontal bevel
across the midpoint of the lower edge and short bevels that form facets along the remainder ofthe oval.[1] The unthinned and uncradled panel has shallow machine tool marks and three
diagonal gouges along the upper edge of the reverse. There are no import stamps or panel
maker’s marks, but there are white chalk and two red wax seals. The smaller darker red seal
depicts a “CVL” monogram within an oval, presumably that of Count Philippe Vilain XIIII, and isidentical to the one red wax seal on the companion portrait of a woman WM-103.b.[2] The larger,
brighter red seal contains an illegible oval impression with “COMMISSAIRE….” printed above itand “DU MUSEE ROY…” printed below.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by paint applied smoothly insuccessive thin layers of transparent glazing, with slightly raised contours along the figure’s
facial features, right hand, blue drapery and gold clasp; the curls of the figure’s long hair are
rendered in delicate parallel curved strokes of light-colored paint.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at780–1000 nanometers.
The painting is signed and dated in light paint along the left midpoint.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition and remains in agood state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination of the X-radiograph andpanel reverse images by Ian Tyers. According to Tyers, the panel has some potential for
dendrochronology.
1.
2. Sold by Count Philippe Vilain XIIII, Brussels (his sale, Paris, 2 May 1857, nos. 43, 44(respectively for 760 and 850 francs to Van Loo).

© 2017 The Leiden Collection