© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of an Elegant Man
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Portrait of an Elegant Man
Willem van Mieris(Leiden 1662 – 1747 Leiden)1708
oil on oval panel
19.5 x 15 cm
signed and dated in light paint, left
midpoint: “W. Van. Mieris. Fe= 1708”
WM-103.a

How to cite
Aono, Junko. “Pendant Portraits of an Elegant Couple, 1708” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nded. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/portrait-of-anelegant-man/ (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 narrativeoccurs.

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

Comparative Figures

early eighteenth century, both elegant and refined. The man wears a stylish
long wig, a white blouse and a brown jacket with a golden buckle, and he hasgracefully draped a gray velvet mantle around his body. Holding his righthand before his chest, he looks affectionately toward his wife. 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 iselegantly 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 the Dutch Republic by theFig 1. Wax seal wax of amonogram consisting of the letters
C, V, and L, affixed to the reverseof the female portrait of WM-103.b

early eighteenth century.
Although the identity of the couple remains unknown, the pair clearly© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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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 from theearliest 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 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 oftextures, such as the soft curled hair, the pleats of the thin white blouse, thebeautifully draped shawls, and the golden jewelry with precious stones. The
sitters’ elegant poses and gestures, characteristic of this master at thisperiod of his career, reflect the period’s dominant 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 made forhis patron Allard de la Court and his wife, Catharina Backer. Those pendants
hung together with 26 other family portraits in the dining room of thecouple’s home.[2] Such portraits were sometimes inherited by descendants
and remained within the family, but many were dispersed over the centuries
and can no longer be identified with known sitters, a fate also shared by thepresent 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 andhis wife. This identification, however, is far from convincing. The couple
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 were painted.[4]- Junko Aono
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of an Elegant Man
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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 Cornelia Willemijn
Fock and Rudolf 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 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 la Court et de sa femme Sara Poelaert” (lot no.
104, copper, oval, 10.5 cm high). Hofstede de Groot identified this portrait of Sara Poelaertwith the one mentioned by Moes under no. 359. This pair of portraits was also found in theeighteenth-century inventories of the De la Court family, but these two paintings cannot beidentified with WM-103.a–b, since the sizes of WM-103.a–b are much larger and the 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 theWorks of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work ofJohn Smith, 8 vols., trans. Edward G. Hawke, 8 vols. (London, 1907–28), originally publishedas Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke 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, 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, see Albert
J. Elen, “Willem van Mieris and His First Model: Agneta Chapman as the Morgan Flora,”
Master Drawings 47 (2009): 465, figs. 2–3.

Provenance© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Count Philippe Vilain XIIII, Brussels (his sale, Paris, 2 May 1857, nos. 43, 44 [respectively760 and 850 francs to Van Loo]).
Christophe van Loo, Ghent (his sale, Paris, 25 May 1881, nos. 15, 16 [respectively 1,920 and1,600 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. 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 translatedby Edward G. Hawke, 10: 197, nos. 347 and 348. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originallypublished as Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten
höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.

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 of theoval.[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’smarks, 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 is identical tothe 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 it and “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 facialfeatures, 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 at© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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780–1000 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

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.

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).

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