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Portrait of an Elegant Woman
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Portrait of an Elegant Woman
Willem van Mieris(Leiden 1662 – 1747 Leiden)1708
oil on oval panel
19.5 x 15 cm
signed and dated in dark paint, lower rightquadrant: “W. V. Mieris. Fe= Anno. 1708.”
WM-103.b

How to cite
Aono, Junko. “Pendant Portraits of an Elegant Couple, 1708” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/(archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

The couple in these two oval portraits represents the height of fashion in the earlyComparative Figures

eighteenth century, both elegant and refined. The man wears a stylish long wig, awhite blouse and a brown jacket with a golden buckle, and he has gracefully draped agray velvet mantle around his body. Holding his right hand before his chest, he looks
affectionately toward his wife. She responds to her husband’s gaze by turning herhead slightly in his direction, though she looks directly at the viewer. She wears awhite blouse and a green satin dress adorned with a golden fringe and jewelry, andshe gently holds a golden-brown shawl to cover her left shoulder. Her dark brown hairis 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 thewardrobes of wealthy citizens in the Dutch Republic by the early eighteenth century.
Although the identity of the couple remains unknown, the pair clearly belonged to theFig 1. Wax seal wax of a monogram
consisting of the letters C, V, and L,
affixed to the reverse of the female
portrait of WM-103.b

affluent elite who were able to commission portraits from Willem van Mieris, anartist who had already established an outstanding reputation for himself.[1] Van Mieris
had excelled in portrait painting from the earliest years of his career, representing© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of an Elegant Woman
Page 3 of 6stolid Dutch burghers in their domestic 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 and culturalcharacter 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 the minute rendering of textures, such as the soft curled hair,
the pleats of the thin 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’s dominant classicizing style.
This type of portrait pair usually hung together with images of relatives and ancestors,
as was the case with two oval portraits that Van Mieris made for his patron Allard dela Court and his wife, Catharina Backer. Those pendants hung together with 26 otherfamily portraits in the dining room of the couple’s home.[2] Such portraits weresometimes inherited by descendants and remained within the family, but many weredispersed over the centuries and can no longer be identified with known sitters, a fatealso shared by the present works.
Provenance research has recently clarified the complete history of their ownershipsince the nineteenth century. The red wax seals affixed to the back 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 Loo from Ghent. He purchased bothportraits at the auction of the collection of Count Philippe Vilain XIIII of Brussels,
held in Paris in 1857, and they were later sold at the Van Loo sale in Paris in
1881.[3] Remarkably, the auction catalogues of 1857 and 1881 describe the couple asWillem van Mieris and his wife. This identification, however, is far from convincing.
The couple hardly looks old enough to be 46 and 45 years old, respectively, the agesof the artist and his wife in 1708, the year these portraits were painted.[4]- Junko Aono, 2017© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of an Elegant Woman
Page 4 of 6Endnotes
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 of portraits of this benefactor andhis 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 Cornelia Willemijn Fock and Rudolf E. O. Ekkart, “De portretgalerij vande 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 Theodoor Hermann Lunsingh Scheurleer, Cornelia Willemijn Fock, and A.J. van Dissel,eds., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse gracht, 6 vols.(Leiden, 1986–92), 2:457–58. The
collection of Jhr. De la Court, sold on 21 September 1904, contained “portraits en buste de Pieter de laCourt et de sa 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 ofportraits was also found in the eighteenth-century inventories of the De la Court family, but these twopaintings cannot be identified with WM-103.a–b, since the sizes of WM-103.a–b are much larger andthe supports are panel, not copper. Ernst Wilhelm Moes, Iconographia Batava: Beredeneerde lijst vangeschilderde 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., trans. Edward G.
Hawke, 8 vols. (London, 1907–28), originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis derWerke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingen and Paris,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, toVan Loo]; sale, Christophe van Loo, Paris, 25 May 1881, nos. 15, 16 [1,920 and 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 portraitsof this couple, possibly made upon the occasion of their marriage in 1684, see Albert J. Elen, “Willemvan 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 [respectively 760 and 850francs to Van Loo]).
Christophe van Loo, Ghent (his sale, Paris, 25 May 1881, nos. 15, 16 [respectively 1,920 and 1,600© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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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 [to Salomon LilianB.V., Amsterdam]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2005.

References
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of
the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke,
10: 197, nos. 347 and 348. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as Beschreibendes und
kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained, oval-shaped, non-Baltic oak, has a wide horizontal bevel
across the midpoint of the lower edge, a vertical bevel along the right edge, and short bevels that form facets
along the remainder of the oval.[1] The unthinned and uncradled panel has a brown radio-opaque coating that
obscures the reverse, although there do not appear to be machine tool marks. There are no import stamps orpanel maker’s marks, but there is one red wax seal with a “CVL” monogram within an oval, presumably thatof Count Philippe Vilain XIIII, which is identical to one of the two red wax seals on the companion portraitof a man WM-103.a. [2]A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by a warm brown underlayer not present
in the pendant portraitWM-103.a. The underlayer remains exposed along the panel edges and where thefigure’s proper left shoulder meets the background, to the left of the signature. The paint has been appliedsmoothly in successive thin layers of transparent glazing, with slightly raised contours along the figure’s facial
features and hands and the drapery folds.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000
nanometers.
The painting is signed and dated in dark paint along the lower right quadrant.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition and remains in a good state ofpreservation.
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Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination of the X-radiograph and panel reverse
images by Ian Tyers. According to Tyers, the panel does not have great potential for dendrochronology.
2. Sold by Count Philippe Vilain XIIII, Brussels (his sale, Paris, 2 May 1857, nos. 43, 44 (respectively for760 and 850 francs to Van Loo).

© 2024 The Leiden Collection