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© 2024 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, 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.

An elegantly dressed woman stands in a dimly lit wooded landscape beneath a rose-

Comparative Figurescolored evening sky. She gently embraces her lap dog while, with her right hand,gracefully fingering the thin, taupe scarf wrapped loosely around the low neckline ofher dark, shimmering dress.[1] As she gazes toward the left, her young face is partly
shaded by her stylish red velvet beret, the lustrous, soft texture and subtle sheen ofwhich the artist has rendered with special care.
This picture was formerly attributed to Jan’s father, Frans van Mieris the Elder(1635–81), whose later work displays similarly strong chiaroscuro effects and robust
highlights.[2] Jan van Mieris, who was apprenticed to his father 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 the present work.[3] A similar woman, forexample, appears in A Woman Reading a Letter and Men Playing Tric-Trac beneath aPortico (fig 1) and Training the Little Dog (ca. 1680).[4] In each of these paintings, shestrikes a comparable pose, with a frontal view of her upper body and her head turnedFig 1. Jan van Mieris, A Woman
Reading a Letter and Men Playing TricTrac beneath a Portico, 1680, oil oncanvas, 77.5 x 67.4 cm, SarahCampbell Blaffer Foundation,Houston, acc. no. 1977.10

to the right as she gazes somewhat downward, and she even holds her dog in an
analogous manner. Particularly in the latter picture, the woman’s dress and therendering of highlights are remarkably similar. Woman Holding a Dog in aLandscape was probably painted a few years later, when Jan van Mieris began tofocus 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.
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,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Woman Holding a Dog in a LandscapePage 3 of 6Frans the Elder initially considered sending Jan to Amsterdam to learn from Gerardde Lairesse (1640–1711), the leading classicist painter and art theorist, thoughultimately he changed his mind.[6] Although Jan never did study with Lairesse, heprobably became involved in the circle of Amsterdam artists and art devotees who
sympathized with Lairesse’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 theHerengracht in Amsterdam.[7]As he stated in his Groot schilderboek (1707), Lairesse believed that classical formand beauty were essential not only for history painting but also for the representationof everyday life. He wrote: “gracefulness,” which consists of the ideal form andproper proportions of the human body elevated in ancient sculptures, “mustindispensably be perceived in modern representations.”[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

© 2024 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 a portrait. Butthe vague depiction of the woman’s face, which is further obscured under the shadow 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 by this painter inThe Leiden Collection, JM-101.
4. Present location now unknown. For A Woman Reading a Letter and Men Playing Tric-Trac beneath aPortico, 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 byhimself. For Training the Little Dog, 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 a monographon Jan van Mieris. I am grateful to her for offering me some unpublished information on this artist. A
Smoking Man (oil on panel, 19 x 14 cm, Stiftung Kunsthaus Heylshof, 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 andpatron 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 levensen kunstbedryven der tans levende en reets overleedene schilders, die van Houbraken, noch eenig anderschryver, zyn aengeteekend, verhaelt worde, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1750–51), 2: 443.
7. Alain Roy, Gérard de Lairesse, 1640–1711 (Paris, 1992), 303–6, nos. P. 143–47; Ekkehard Mai, SanderPaarlberg, and Gregor M. Weber, eds., De Kroon op het Werk: Hollandse schilderkunst 1670–1750 (Exh.
cat. Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Museum; Kassel, MuseumslandschaftHessen 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 deLairesse, Het Groot Schilderboek, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1707), 1:177. For Lairesse’s instructions onadapting important qualities of history painting to genre pictures, see Junko Aono, “Ennobling Daily
Life: A Question of Refinement in Early Eighteenth-Century 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© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Woman Holding a Dog in a Landscape
Page 5 of 6“curved” arm was what Jan van Mieris had initially learned from his father’s later works, likely as amethod to idealize or classicize ordinary people. For Otto Naumann’s discussion 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 Winckler (1731–95), Leipzig, by 1768.
[Newhouse Galleries, New York, inv. no. 16516, before 1987].
Private collection, Southern California (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 15 October 1987, no. 26, as by Frans
van Mieris the Younger [to a Midwest private collector]).
Private collection, United States (sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 8 June 2007, no. 203 [to Jack Kilgore &Co., Inc.]).
[Jack Kilgore & 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
the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translated 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 der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII.
Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and 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.
Aono, Junko. Confronting the Golden Age: Imitation and Innovation in Dutch Genre Painting.
Amsterdam, 2015, 177, no 2.
Van der Hut, Margreet. Jan van Mieris (1660-1690): His Life and Work. Zaandijk, 2021, 86–87, no. 27.
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Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained, rectangular oak, has bevels on all four sides.[1] The panel isunthinned 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’smarks.
A warm-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied, and the paint has been applied in successive thinlayers 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 in good 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 at 780–1000
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 of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

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

© 2024 The Leiden Collection