Willem van Mieris Leiden 1662 - 1747

Two years after the death of his father and teacher Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681), Willem became a member of the guild of St. Luke in Leiden, where he became hoofdman in 1697/8, 1704 and 1708. His precisely painted genre scenes, such as the present one, are close in style to similar works created by his father. Other than his father, Willem also depicted a wide range of history subjects on a small scale. Both genres were in his own time already much in demand and as a result expensive. The artist had various important customers who commissioned paintings from him, of which the most famous was perhaps the Leiden cloth manufacturer Pieter de la Court.