Woman Holding a Dog in a LandscapeJan van Mieris(Leiden 1660 – 1690 Rome)ca. 1683–85
oil on panel
27 x 20.7 cm
JM-100© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Holding a Dog in a Landscape
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How to cite
Aono, Junko. “Woman Holding a Dog in a Landscape” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed.
Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/a-womanholding-a-dog-in-a-landscape/ (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 elegantly dressed woman stands in a dimly lit wooded landscape beneathComparative Figuresa rose-colored evening sky. She gently embraces her lap dog while, with her
right hand, gracefully fingering the thin, taupe scarf wrapped loosely aroundthe low neckline of her dark, shimmering dress.[1] As she gazes toward theleft, her young face is partly shaded by her stylish red velvet beret, thelustrous, soft texture and subtle sheen of which the artist has rendered withspecial care.
This picture was formerly attributed to Jan’s father, Frans van Mieris theElder (1635–81), whose later work displays similarly strong chiaroscuro
effects and robust highlights.[2] Jan van Mieris, who was apprenticed to hisfather along with his brother Willem, produced a number of genre pictures in
his father’s manner during the early 1680s that are stylistically related to thepresent work.[3] A similar woman, for example, appears in A Woman Readinga Letter and Men Playing Tric-Trac beneath a Portico (fig 1) and Training theFig 1. Jan van Mieris, A Woman
Reading a Letter and Men Playing
Tric-Trac beneath a Portico, 1680,
oil on canvas, 77.5 x 67.4
cm, Sarah Campbell Blaffer
Foundation, Houston, acc. no.
1977.10

Little Dog (ca. 1680).[4] In each of these paintings, she strikes a comparable
pose, with a frontal view of her upper body and her head turned to the rightas she gazes somewhat downward, and she even holds her dog in an
analogous manner. Particularly in the latter picture, the woman’s dress andthe rendering of highlights are remarkably similar. Woman Holding a Dog in aLandscape was probably painted a few years later, when Jan van Mieris
began to focus on single figures in the open air, as in, for example,
his Smoking Man, dated 1685.[5] In this painting he similarly situated his sitter
before a wooded landscape with dimly lit trees silhouetting the evening sky.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Holding a Dog in a Landscape
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The elegant manner in which the woman holds her scarf and her little dog
reveals Van Mieris’s interest in classicism at this stage of his career.
According to Van Gool, Frans the Elder initially considered sending Jan toAmsterdam to learn from Gerard de Lairesse (1640–1711), the leadingclassicist painter and art theorist, though ultimately he changed his mind.[6]Although Jan never did study with Lairesse, he probably became involved inthe circle of Amsterdam artists and art devotees who sympathized withLairesse’s principles. Jan’s allegory, Minerva as Patron of the Arts, dated
1685, was in fact inspired by Lairesse’s prominent series of five allegories ingrisaille the artist painted for the textile magnate Philips de Flines, who lived
on the Herengracht in Amsterdam.[7]As he stated in his Groot schilderboek (1707), Lairesse believed thatclassical form and beauty were essential not only for history painting but also
for the representation of everyday life. He wrote: “gracefulness,” which
consists of the ideal form and proper proportions of the human body elevatedin ancient sculptures, “must indispensably be perceived in modernrepresentations.”[8] Whether this gracefulness was successfully incorporated
into the female figure in the picture or not,[9] Jan van Mieris became
increasingly keen to learn directly from works by ancient and modern artists
in Italy, and he departed for that country in 1688. Unfortunately, he soon fell
ill and died at the age of thirty, just a few years after he arrived in Rome.

- Junko Aono, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Holding a Dog in a Landscape
Page 4 of 6Endnotes

1. The fashionably dressed figure, presented knee-length in a landscape, could be considered aportrait. But the vague depiction of the woman’s face, which is further obscured under theshadow of the beret, does not substantiate this interpretation.
2. For instance, see Death of Lucretia, dated 1679 (FM-103), or The Letter Writer, dated 1680,Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
3. For Jan’s genre pictures made around the early 1680s, see the entry on another picture bythis painter in The Leiden Collection, JM-101.
4. Present location now unknown. For A Woman Reading a Letter and Men Playing Tric-Trac
beneath a Portico, see Otto Naumann, Frans van Mieris (1635–1681) the Elder, 2 vols.
(Doornspijk, 1981), 1: fig. 129; 2:130, no. B7; Peter Sutton, ed., Love Letters: Dutch Genre
Painting in the Age of Vermeer (Exh. cat. Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum; Dublin, National
Gallery of Ireland) (London, 2003), 200–2, no. 43. Naumann later suggested that Jan would
have been capable of executing this picture almost entirely by himself. For Training the LittleDog, see also the entry on JM-101 and sale, Charpentier, Paris, 6 April 1957, no. 1.
5. The date of the current picture is suggested by Margreet van der Hut, who is researching amonograph on Jan van Mieris. I am grateful to her for offering me some unpublishedinformation on this artist. A Smoking Man (oil on panel, 19 x 14 cm, Stiftung KunsthausHeylshof, Worms) is one of the paintings by Jan van Mieris that was owned by Pieter de la
Court van der Voort, the famous Leiden collector and patron of Willem van Mieris; see
Theodoor Hermann Lunsingh Scheurleer, ed., Het Rapenburg: Geschiedenis van een Leidse
gracht, 6 vols.(Leiden, 1986–92), 6: 479.
6. Johan van Gool, De nieuwe schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen
waer in de levens- en kunstbedryven der tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, dievan Houbraken, noch eenig ander schryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worde, 2 vols. (TheHague, 1750–51), 2: 443.
7. Alain Roy, Gérard de Lairesse, 1640–1711 (Paris, 1992), 303–6, nos. P. 143–47; Ekkehard
Mai, Sander Paarlberg, and Gregor M. Weber, eds., De Kroon op het Werk: Hollandse
schilderkunst

1670–1750

(Exh.

cat.

Cologne,Wallraf-Richartz-Museum;

Dordrecht,Dordrechts Museum; Kassel, Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel) (Cologne, 2006), 200–1,no. 47. Lairesse painted these works between 1675 and 1683.
8. “De bevalligheid moet noodzakelyk in Moderne Verbeeldingen waargenomen worden.”
Gerard de Lairesse, Het Groot Schilderboek, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1707), 1:177. For
Lairesse’s instructions on adapting important qualities of history painting to genre pictures,
see Junko Aono, “Ennobling Daily Life: A Question of Refinement in Early Eighteenth© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Holding a Dog in a Landscape
Page 5 of 6Century Dutch Genre Painting,” Simiolus 33, no. 4 (2007/8): 240–43; and Junko
Aono, Confronting the Golden Age: Imitation and Innovation in Dutch Genre Painting
1680-1750 (Amsterdam, 2015), 101-3.
9. Although the bend of the woman’s right arm seems far from natural in an anatomical sense,
this type of “curved” arm was what Jan van Mieris had initially learned from his father’s later
works, likely as a method to idealize or classicize ordinary people. For Otto Naumann’sdiscussion on the “curved” elbow depicted by Frans van Mieris the Elder, see Otto Naumann,“Frans van Mieris’ Personal Style,” in Frans van Mieris 1635–1681, ed. Quentin Buvelot (Exh.
cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) (Zwolle, 2005), 37–41.

ProvenancePossibly Jan Six (1618–1700), Amsterdam.
Possibly Schrödering, Hamburg.
Gottfried Winkler, Leipzig, by 1768, as by Frans van Mieris the Elder.
[Newhouse Galleries, New York].
Private collection, Southern California (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 15 October 1987, no. 26[to a Midwest private collector], as by Frans van Mieris the Younger).
Private collection, United States (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 8 June 2007, no. 203 [to JackKilgore & Co., Inc., New York]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.

References
Krechauf, Franz Wilhelm. Historische Erklärungen der Gemälde, welche Herr Gottfried
Winkler in Leipzig gesammlet. Leipzig, 1768, 175, no. 433, as by Frans van Mieris the Elder.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch
Painters of theSeventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited andtranslated by Edward G. Hawke, 10: 87, no. 322, as by Frans van Mieris the Elder. 8 vols.
London, 1907–18. Originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis derWerke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingenand Paris, 1907–1928.
Naumann, Otto. Frans van Mieris (1635–1681) the Elder. 2 vols. Doornspijk, 1981, 2: 134–35,no. B20, fig. CB20, as possibly by Frans van Mieris the Younger.
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Woman Holding a Dog in a Landscape
Page 6 of 6Aono, Junko. Confronting the Golden Age: Imitation and Innovation in Dutch Genre Painting.
Amsterdam, 2015, 177, no 2.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular oak, has bevels on all foursides.[1] The panel is unthinned and uncradled and has machine tool marks along the entire
reverse. There is a remnant of a red wax seal, a black stencil, white chalk, and a handwritten
inscription but no import stamps or panel maker’s marks.
A warm-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied, and the paint has been applied insuccessive thin layers of transparent glazing. The contours of the figure’s flesh tones, red hat,drapery folds, white sleeve, and the white fur of the spaniel are slightly raised. The painting is ingood condition with areas of thinness through the figure’s skirt and the landscape.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at780–1000 nanometers or in the X-radiograph.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting underwent minor conservation treatment in 2007 and remains in a good state ofpreservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection