Hermit Praying in the Wilderness
Willem van Mieris(Leiden 1662 – 1747 Leiden)

1707
oil on panel
21 x 17.4 cm
signed and indistinctly dated in dark paint,
upper right corner: “W. Van. Mieris, Fe Ano
1707”
WM-100© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Aono, Junko. “Hermit Praying in the Wilderness” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited
by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/a-hermit-praying-in-thewilderness/ (archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

An old hermit, tucked away in a rocky cave opening to a mountainous

Comparative Figureslandscape, clasps his hands in prayer as he bends over a stone table, uponwhich rest two books, a skull and a crucifix. He gazes downward upon theopen pages of one of the books, his eyes almost closed as he concentrates
inwardly on the meaning of the text. Light falling from the upper left
separates the bearded hermit from the darkness of the grotto, and createstiny, shimmering highlights on the sculpted figure of Christ on the wooden
crucifix.
The religious character of the image might lead to the assumption that thepainting was destined for a Catholic patron, but the subject of a religious
recluse was not uncommon in the Protestant culture of the Netherlands inthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

[1]

One hermit that appears in a

number of Dutch paintings is Saint Jerome, the leading translator of theFig 1. Willem van Mieris,
Repentant Mary Magdalene, 1709,
oil on panel, 20.3 x 15.7 cm,
present location unknown

Bible.[2] Although Willem van Mieris did not include Saint Jerome’s attributesof a lion and a pen, he may well have had this hermit in mind whenconceiving this work. A sales catalogue from 1747—the earliest known recordof this picture—identifies the painting as “St. Jerome in a cell.” This catalogue
also notes that the painting had a pendant, Mary Magdalene, by the samemaster, a painting that can be identified as The Repentant Mary Magdaleneof 1709 (fig 1).[3] In this painting, Mary Magdalene sits with her attributes in asimilarly craggy landscape. She also turns her head and upper body to lookat a crucifix on her right in such a manner that visually connects her to thehermit in the present picture.[4]© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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As one of the most esteemed successors to the seventeenth-century painter
Gerrit Dou (1613–75), Van Mieris often adapted subjects and motifs fromDou’s pictures. The present painting is no exception.[5] At least elevenpictures by Dou feature hermits. The Hermit of 1670 (National Gallery of Art,Washington D.C.), for instance, depicts the same type of old man before aBible, a crucifix, a skull, a basket, and an hourglass on a stone table.[6] In hispicture, Van Mieris clearly carried on Dou’s pictorial tradition. He also strove
to emulate Dou’s refined painterly technique of differentiating surfaces in hisfigures and still-life objects. The delicately executed and minute details of thestill life on the rock and the old man’s head and hands—especially thewrinkled forehead with the bulging veins, the long gray beard, and therugged hands with black fingernails—demonstrate Van Mieris’s utmost effort
to display his virtuosity as a “fine painter.”
The great reputation of Dou’s hermit paintings among early eighteenthcentury collectors must have been one of the factors that determined Van
Mieris’s choice of the subject.[7] For instance, the artist’s chief patron inLeiden, the illustrious collector Pieter de la Court van der Voort, bought oneof Dou’s hermits from another elite Leiden collector for the enormous
amount of 3,000 guilders in 1710.[8] It thus comes as no surprise that VanMieris chose this subject to parade his virtuosic technique as he sought toappeal to the art lovers of his day.

- Junko Aono, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Hermit Praying in the Wilderness
Page 4 of 7Endnotes

1. For the religious affiliation of owners of hermits by Gerrit Dou or other Leiden painters, see
Eric Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen, Leidse fijnschilders: van Gerrit
Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum deLakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 111–13, no. 15 (cf. 85–87, no. 3); Ronni Baer, “The Paintings ofGerrit Dou (1613–1675)” (PhD diss. New York University, 1990), 55 n. 143; Annegret Laabs
and Christoph Scho?lzel, De Leidse Fijnschilders uit Dresden (Exh. cat. Leiden, StedelijkMuseum De Lakenhal; Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen)(Zwolle, 2000), 35–37.
2. Hermit iconography also stemmed from Saint Francis; see, for instance, Eric Jan Sluijter,Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen, Leidse fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans vanMieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal) (Zwolle,1988), 86. The image of a humble anchorite, withdrawn from society and contemplating God
in a wasteland, was probably viewed as a personification of piety and devotion, virtues thatserve as a foil to the materialistic, active life on earth. For an interpretation of the hermit as asymbol of contemplative life, in contrast to active life, see Ronni Baer, “The Paintings ofGerrit Dou (1613–1675)” (PhD diss. New York University, 1990), 55–56; Arthur K. WheelockJr., The Collection of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogues: Dutch Paintings ofthe Seventeenth Century (Washington, D.C., 1995), 57–60; Ronni Baer, Gerrit Dou,
1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague, Royal
Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis, 2000–1) (Zwolle, 2000), 132–33, no. 34; Annegret Laabs,ed., De Leidse Fijnschilders uit Dresden (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal)(Zwolle, 2000), 35.
3. Jacques de Roore, his sale, The Hague, 4 September 1747, no. 104 (£153, together with no.
105 as a pendant, sold to Van Spangen). The Repentant Mary Magdalene was with Sphinx
Fine Art in London in 1997.
4. As this painting was executed two years later than the one of the hermit, it remains uncertain
whether Van Mieris intended from the start to make a pair of these two paintings. Their union,
however, gives us a glimpse into the early context of display, in which the hermit was viewed
and appreciated in an eighteenth-century collector’s cabinet.
5. For Willem van Mieris’s borrowing of motifs and subjects from Dou’s paintings, see JunkoAono, “Looking Back to the Dutch Golden Age: Early Eighteenth-Century Genre Painting byWillem van Mieris,” in Holland nach Rembrandt: Zur niederländischen Kunst zwischen 1670
und 1750, ed. Ekkehard Mai (Cologne, 2006), 225–46; and Junko Aono, Confronting theGolden Age: Imitation and Innovation in Dutch Genre Painting 1680–1750 (Amsterdam,© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Hermit Praying in the Wilderness
Page 5 of 72015), 84-94. Another picture by Dou, Hermit Praying (Minneapolis Institute of Arts), displays
meticulous detail, including the clasped rugged hands with dirty fingernails, which are also
found in the current painting by Van Mieris.
6. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1995), 57–60;
Ronni Baer, Gerrit Dou, 1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K.
Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich Picture
Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Zwolle, 2000), 132–33, no. 34.
7. The subject of the hermit was in high favor with Leiden painters, such as Quirijn vanBrekelenkam and Dou’s followers who worked in his manner. See Eric Jan Sluijter, Marlies
Enklaar, and Paul Niewenhuizen, Leidse fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris deJonge, 1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 85–87,113; Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675)” (PhD diss. New York University,1990), 53 n. 137.
8. De la Court bought this picture from Witterd van der Aa with the agency of the painter Carelde Moor. Regionaal Archief Leiden, family archive of De la Court, nr. 117a: the self-written
inventory of Allard de la Court of 1749: “the large room at the side of Rapenburg [grootekaamer aan ’t Raapenburg] . . . Class A [’t soort A],” no. 5. Theodoor Hermann Lunsingh
Scheurleer, Cornelia Willemijn Fock, and A.J. Van Dissel Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis vaneen Leidse gracht, 6 vols. (Leiden, 1986–92), 2: 442. According to the eighteenth-century
artist-biographer Jacob Campo Weyerman, who saw the picture at Pieter de la Court’shouse, the painting was “painted gloriously, miraculously, and in such indescribable detailthat greater artistry was inconceivable”: Jacob Campo Weyerman, De levens-beschryvingen
der Nederlandsche konst-schilders en konst-schilderessen, 4 vols. (The Hague, 1729–69), 2:
117–18. Two years earlier, August II, Elector of Saxony, had purchased another hermit by
Dou from an Antwerp dealer for approximately 1,000 guilders: Ronni Baer, “The Paintings ofGerrit Dou (1613–1675)” (PhD diss. New York University, 1990), no. 28; 52 n. 134.

Provenance
Jacques de Roore (his sale, The Hague, 4 September 1747, no. 104 [£153, together with no.
105, Mary Magdalene, as its pendant, to Van Spangen]).
John van Spangen (his sale, London, 12 February 1748, no. 73 [for £43.1]).
Philippus van der Land (his sale, Amsterdam, 22 May 1776, no. 55 [for 180 florins, together
with no. 54, Mary Magdalene, as its pendant]).
Charles Alexander de Calonne (his sale, Skinner and Dyke, London, 23 March 1795, no. 37[for £48.6]).
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Edward Atkinson, Fowey (his sale, London, 9 March 1912, no. 163).
Possibly Major Forbes Fraser (his sale, London, 21 November 1924, no. 120).
(Possibly sale, Christie’s, London, 14 July 1961, no. 60).
Private collection, South America [Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York, 1992; to Bert van Deun,1993].
Bert van Deun, Belgium, 1993 [Otto Naumann, Ltd., New York, 2004].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2004.

Exhibition History
Williamstown, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, “An Inner World: SeventeenthCentury Dutch Genre Painting,” 5 March–17 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].

References
Buchanan, William. Memoirs of Painting, with a Chronological History of the Importation ofPictures by the Great Masters into England since the French Revolution. 2 vols. London,
1824, 1: 236, no. 37.
Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish andFrench Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829–42, 1: 96, no. 29.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent DutchPainters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translatedby Edward G. Hawke, 10: 116, no. 41. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as
Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen
Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.

Versions
Versions and Copies

1. Repentant Mary Magdalene, signed and dated, upper right: W. VAN MIERIS 1709, oil onpanel, 20.3 x 15.7 cm, present location unknown.

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Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular oak, has bevels on all foursides.[1] The unthinned and uncradled panel has wide, shallow, horizontal handtool marks andthree deep horizontal gouges but no machine tool marks. There is a stencil and remnants of four
paper labels but no wax seals, import stamps or panel maker’s marks along the reverse.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied, followed by paint applied smoothly insuccessive thin layers of transparent glazing with slightly raised low brushmarking along theshadows of the hermit’s blue robe, the edges of the book pages, and the dark foliage along theupper left quadrant.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at
780–1000 nanometers.
The painting is signed and indistinctly dated in dark paint along the upper right corner.
The painting underwent minor conservation treatment in 2004 and 2012 and remains in a goodstate of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

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 does not have great
potential for dendrochronology. The shims would need to be removed from the upper andlower edges to give access to both endgrains, as the panel is short of rings.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection