Willem van Mieris

The poultry seller

VAT reduced rate

Lot Closed

July 8, 02:08 PM GMT

Estimate

60,000 - 80,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

The Property of a Family

Willem van Mieris

Leiden 1662 - 1747

The poultry seller

signed and dated lower right: W. van Mieris. Fe^t. 1718.

bears a hand-written label on the reverse: N:32/ Wilh: van Mieris/ 1718.

oil on oak panel

unframed: 25.4 x 21.6 cm.; 10 x 8½ in.

framed: 44.5 x 40.6 cm.; 17½ x 16 in.

Ewout van Dishoek (1678-1744), Heer van Domburgh, The Netherlands;

His posthumous sale, The Hague, 9 June 1745, lot 36, for 170 Florins;

Leonardus Pieter Klerk de Reus, The Hague;

Baron Anselm von Rothschild (1803-1874), Frankfurt-am-Main and Vienna (acquired from the above on 25 May 1845, for circa 2,900 l., through the agency of Moritz Daniel Oppenheim and the dealer E. Netscher, as part of a group of 35 paintings);

Private collection, Germany;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 11 December 1985, lot 78;

With Charles Roelofsz, Amsterdam;

From whom acquired in circa 1988;

Thence by inheritance to the present owner.

G. Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderijen, vol. 2, 1752, pp. 168, 171, cat. no. 36;
J. Smith, A Supplement to the Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. IX, London 1842, p. 73, cat. no. 67;
C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, vol. X, Stuttgart/Paris 1928, pp. 158-9, cat. no. 207 and cat. no. 211.

Willem van Mieris continued the tradition of fijnschilderij (fine painting) in Leiden, of which his father had been the foremost exponent in the 17th century, well into the 18th. As well as portraits and history subjects, a significant portion of his output was given over to depictions of tradespeople, here a vendor of poultry and game, who holds aloft a cockerel for his client, a maid, to inspect. A pun in Dutch as well as English, subjects such as this had well-recognized overtones of lasciviousness in the preceding century, perhaps less so for a more genteel 18th century public.