Willem van Mieris

Jonas Witsen, Amsterdam,
his sale, Amsterdam, 16 August 1790, kunstboek D, nr. 6;
J. de Groot, Amsterdam,
his sale, Amsterdam, 10 December 1804, kunstboek E, nr. 19 (purchased by Harssevoort);
Adriaan van Harssevoort,
his sale, Rotterdam, 4 November 1817, kunstboek A, nr. 46;
Von Gerhardt;
Sydney J. Lamon, New York,
by whom sold, London, Christie's, 26 November 1973, lot 318 (to Bijl);
H.R. Bijl, The Hague, 
by whom sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 17 November 1993, lot 2,
purchased by the late father of the present owners

Jaap Bolten et al., Old Master Drawings from the Print Room of the University of Leiden, exhib. cat., Saarbrücken, Saarlandmuseum, 1986-87, p. 178, note 7, under cat. 65;
Albert J. Elen, '"Ongemeen uitvoerig op Perkament met sapverven behandelt".  De gekleurde tekeningen van Willem van Mieris uit de collectie Jonas Witsen', Delineavit et Sculpsit, no. 15 (May 1995), pp. 5, 6, 15, fig. 5, cat. no. 5 

Hinge mounted to card. There is some minor buckling to the vellum and some small losses of gouache in places. Otherwise in good condition with the medium fresh and vibrant throughout.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

As was initially described by Emke Elen-Clifford Kocq van Breugel, in her 1986 entry on another similar drawing of The Judgement of Paris, in Leiden, and more fully elaborated by Albert Elen (see Literature), this superb gouache was originally one of a series of twenty exquisite colored works of this type owned by the Amsterdam collector Jonas Witsen (1733-1788).  A product of the Leiden 'fijnschilder' tradition, Mieris frequently made very refined and detailed drawings on vellum, some in black chalk and a few, like these, in color, but all created as independent works of art, to be sold on the market. 

The group of gouaches owned by Witsen comprised all sorts of unrelated subjects and themes: five scenes from the Old Testament, one from the Life of Christ, three saints, five mythological scenes, two historical subjects and four genre scenes.  Yet despite this diversity, they may well have been made to order, and indeed with the exception of five other colored drawings known from early sale catalogues, Witsen seems to have had a more or less total monopoly on Mieris's works of this type.

Only eight of the twenty gouaches described in the catalogue of the 1790 sale of Witsen's collection are known today, but the catalogue descriptions are so detailed that we have full information regarding the subjects of the whole group.  Some of the finished, colored drawings are based on, or in some other way linked with, black chalk drawings by the artist, which in some cases may have served as preliminary studies.  In the case of the present work, a clearly related but less worked up, unsigned black chalk drawing on vellum is in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.

Willem van Mieris's extremely rare, highly finished gouaches of this type stand alone in late 17th-century Dutch art, reinterpreting the Leiden traditions of the earlier part of the century in a more decorative visual vocabulary that anticipates the 18th century.  They are also virtuoso displays of the artist's technical and colouristic skill.