Willem van Mieris (3 June 1662 – 26 Jan. 1747); 18th-century painter from the Northern Netherlands. Willem van Mieris was a painter, sculptor and etcher active in Leiden. He studied under his father Frans van Mieris I (1635-1682), who was a successful genre painter. Willem had a reasonably successful career, being supported by a few patrons who commissioned and collected various of his works. His oeuvre consists mostly of genre and portraiture, with some landscape painting, as well as some sculptures. Van Mieris’ style was that of the fijnschilders, and his genre works, especially later in his career, depicted scenes from upper-class society. Willem van Mieris was born in Leiden and spent his whole life and career there. At 19, Willem van Mieris took over the family workshop after his father died in 1681, aged 45. He had barely finished his training in the family studio and it would take another 2 years before he entered the Leiden painters’ guild in 1685. He set out to uphold his father’s reputation as a Leiden fijnschilder, or painter in the “fine manner”. The Leiden fine painters produced a small scale of mostly genre paintings or portraits with high attention to detail, which was made popular by Frans’ master Gerard Dou (1613-1675). Frans’ superb skills as a painter rubbed off on his son and his influence can be seen in technique, subject matter, and style . He finished what was left incomplete on his father’s demise . One year later, in 1684, he married Agneta Chapman, whom he often used as his model. Besides genre and portrait painting, Willem van Mieris was also a skilled landscape painter, etcher, and draughtsman; moreover, he also tried his hand at history painting with remarkable results.... ...van Mieris’ artistic approach to painting included the repetition of similar figures and the features of figures. This approach provided both practical and aesthetic benefits to the artist. Not only did it... (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_van_Mieris) undefined

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