WILLEM VAN MIERIS | VENUS MOURNING ADONIS

Possibly Catharina de la Court-Backer, her sale, Leiden, 23 March 1767, lot 25 (‘Venus en Adonis, in een Landschap’, among ‘De alderbeste Tekeningen van hem bekend’;

Probably sale Rotterdam, 30 June 1783 (Collections of Jan van der Maas and the Widow of Paulus van Spijk), kunstboek B, lot 121 (‘Venus beweent den dooden Adonis, in en landschap, extra uitvoerig met zwart krijt op Pergament geteekend, door W. van Mieris’);

Neville Davison Goldsmid (1814-1875), The Hague (L.1962);

Private Collection, The Netherlands

Willem van Mieris spent much of his career in Leiden working in the style of his father, Frans, with whom he had trained. Van Mieris’s work often comprised genre scenes and portraits, but with the prominence of pictures from history, mythology and literature in the hierarchy of genres, he also focused his attention on history painting and religious scenes. 

This meticulously detailed drawing, dated 1706, is a beautiful example of Van Mieris’s mature style and his subtle mastery in depicting idyllic mythological subjects. The drawing shows the famous story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, of Venus mourning the death of Adonis. Adonis, the mortal paramour of Venus, the goddess of love, ignored her plea to refrain from hunting dangerous game and was then gored by a wild boar. Van Mieris depicts the critical moment when Adonis's lifeless body is discovered by Venus who tears her hair in grieving agony, while her son, Cupid, tenderly holds the limp arm of the dead youth. The episode was a popular subject for artists from the early 16th century onwards and, indeed, one to which Van Mieris himself returned a number of times.

A painting with much the same composition was sold in 2005 as Attributed to Willem van Mieris¹, but Dr. Albert J. Elen considers it a workshop production, based on the present autograph drawing by the artist.

1.  Sale, London, Christie's, 9 December 2005, lot 195