FRANS VAN MIERIS THE ELDER

aetas aurea i

Otto Naumann

1981. 2 vols. in 4to. 516 pp. of text, 468 illustrations, including 12 color plates. Cloth bound with dustjacket

ISBN 90 70288 04 4

Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681) is one of the major seventeenth-century Dutch genre painters. His pictures are of remarkable quality, and they attest to his vital role in the development of painting in his time. With Gerard ter Borch, Nicolaes Maes, Pieter de Hooch, Johannes Vermeer, Gabriel Metsu and Gerard Dou, Frans van Mieris participated in the greatest era of Dutch genre painting.

This study attempts first to establish the core of surviving works, setting them in chronological order based on a structure of dated paintings. Undated pictures are arranged in relationship to this core and to dated or datable paintings by other artists. Van Mieris' oeuvre is most interesting in this latter aspect: in the establishment of subjects and stylistic formulae he often precedes his contemporaries. By combining various elements from earlier pictures with his personal style Van Mieris made a significant contribution to Dutch genre painting.
Van Mieris's leadership among the 'fijnschilders' of his day contributed significantly to the development of Dutch painting towards a tighter, more refined style. Often, paintings executed in this manner during the last quarter of the seventeenth century can be seen to derive from his prototype or from a series of related paintings based on his primary example.