JAN VAN MIERIS | MAN AND A PAGE OFFERING FRUIT TO A SEATED WOMAN, IN A COURTYARD

M. de Jeude, the Hague;

By whom sold, 18 April 1735, lot 54, for f.40 (as Frans van Mieris);

Sale, the Hague, Bicker van Zwieten, 12 April 1741, lot 56, for f.190 to Van Olden (as Frans van Mieris);

Sale, the Hague, Bicker van Zwieten, 4 April 1755, lot 22, for f.202 (as Frans van Mieris);

Possibly, sale, M. Beukelaar and A. de Waart, the Hague, 19 April 1752, no. 230, for f.41 (this sale impossible if painting was in both Bicker van Zwieten sales above);

Jan Bisschop, Rotterdam, inv. of 13 April 1771;

Thomas Hope, London, 1829;

Thence by inheritance to Henry Thomas Hope, Deepdene, and to Lord Francis Pelham-Clinton-Hope, Deepdene;

By whom sold, London, P. and D. Colnaghi and A. Wertheimer, 1898 (as Frans van Mieris);

Mrs. F. Slesinger, London,

By whom sold, London, Sotheby's, 5 July 1967, lot 115 (as Frans van Mieris) to Brod Gallery;

With H. Shickman Gallery, New York, cat. no. 8 (as Frans van Mieris);

Private collection, Texas.

J. Smith, A Catalogue raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, vol. I, London 1829, no. 70 (as Frans van Mieris);

G.F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britian, London 1854, vol. II, p. 117;

Catalogue of Pictures...lent to the S. Kensington Museum by Lord F. Pelham-Clinton-Hope, 1891, no. 22 (as "too spiritless and over smooth" for Frans van Mieris);

E.W. Moes, Iconographia Batava, vol. II, Amsterdam 1905, p. 102, no. 19 (as Frans van Mieris);

E. Wiersum, "Het schilderijen-kabinet van Jan Bisschop te Rotterdam," in Oud Holland 28 (1910), p. 173 (as Frans van Mieris);

C. Hofstede de Groot, Verzeichnis der Werke der...Hollandischen Maler, vol. X, 1928, no. 143 (as Frans van Mieris);

H. Van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse beeldende Kunstenaars, Amsterdam 1963, p. 213, no. 35 (as Frans van Mieris);

O. Naumann, Frans van Mieris the Elder (1625-1681), Doornspijk 1981, vol. II, no. 112, p. 118, reproduced plate 112 (as tentatively Frans with collaboration by Willem van Mieris);

M. van der Hut, Jan van Mieris (1660 - 1690): His Life and Work, forthcoming, cat. no. 13.

London, South Kensington Museum (Victoria and Albert), 1891-98, no. 22.

Jan van Mieris, son of the fijnschilder Frans van Mieris, likely completed this high-life genre scene in the late 1670s or early 1680s, at the end of his apprenticeship with his father. The figures depicted are not portraits but rather genre figures based on types developed by Frans. The composition owes much to Frans's A Man and a Woman (fig. 1), and the figure of the woman is based on the woman in Frans’s The Music Lesson (Gemäldegalerie, Dresden).¹ Jan specialized in three-quarter length genre scenes, and the positions of the hands of the figures here are similar to those in many other paintings securely attributed to Jan. 

The works of Jan van Mieris, his brother Willem, and their father are often confused due to early collectors cataloging and selling paintings as by Frans even if they were by one of his sons. Such was the case with the present painting, which is presented here for the first time as the work of Jan. His oeuvre is becoming clearer with recent scholarship.

1. Frans van Mieris, The Music Lesson, 1672, oil on panel with arched top, 41 by 31 cm. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, 1743. See O. Naumann (in Literature), cat. no. 89.