Of the more than 750 paintings evaluated in the 258 Leiden estate inventories, only 22 were worth 100 or more guilders. These were often substantially higher than the valuations given in the estate inventories of burghers and dealers. Attestations of this fact are found primarily in literary sources, and they generally touch on the exorbitant amounts that foreign princes were willing to pay for his work. Van Mieris was one of the best-paid painters in the Dutch Republic. Isaac Gerard and the Price of Van Mieris’s Work This seeming anomaly is not as strange as it might initially appear, for Van Mieris’s work, like that of Dou, was so expensive that only a select few could afford to buy it. Of the 258 Leiden estate inventories used for this research, only ten list works by Van Mieris. His name is not among the most frequently cited artists in seventeenth-century estate inventories (see Tables 2 and 3 in the essay Leiden Fijnschilders and the Local Art Market in the Golden Age in this catalogue). Surprisingly, however, much as with Dou, extant estate inventories in Leiden and other cities do not list many of Van Mieris’s paintings and provide little documentation about his reputation. Gerard de Lairesse (1641–1711) also estimated Van Mieris above Dou in some respects: “Francis Mieris has not only curiously followed his master Gerrard Dou, in the elegant modern manner, but is, in some things, his superior.” The Amsterdam city physician Jan Sysmus, in about 1670, even deemed Van Mieris to be “better than Dou.” The view that Van Mieris eclipsed his teacher was also held by the Frenchman Roger de Piles (1635–1709), who noted in his La vie des peintres of about 1695 that Van Mieris improved on Dou particularly with respect to composition and coloration. For instance, Cornelis de Bie’s (1627–1715) comment in 1661 that whoever sees a picture by Van Mieris “has the work of Dou in mind,” underscores the parity between the two painters. Van Mieris lived up to Dou’s expectations and, already quite early in his career, gained a reputation equal to and sometimes even surpassing that of his master. Van Mieris must have already been quite familiar with Ter Borch’s work in the 1650s, judging from the affinity between his Child’s Lesson (Hannah Entrusting Her Son Samuel into the Care of the High-Priest Eli?) ( fig 6) from the second half of the 1650s and Ter Borch’s The Reading Lesson from just after 1650 ( fig 7). Van Mieris’s definitive break with his master’s style, however, can be credited to Gerard ter Borch (1617–81), whose genre paintings of prosperous figures in elegant interiors had a substantial impact on Van Mieris. Van Mieris based his various versions of Oyster Meal on Steen’s somewhat earlier Girl Eating Oysters now in The Hague, while Steen derived his variations of Doctor’s Visit from Van Mieris’s famous “prototype” in Vienna ( fig 5). Moreover, he and his good friend Jan Steen (1625/26–79), who had returned to Leiden from Delft in 1657, mutually influenced each other. 1669) ( fig 3), with whom he had worked as a pupil in Dou’s workshop for some time, and Gabriel Metsu (1629–67) ( fig 4). Other important influences were his fellow townsmen Quiringh van Brekelenkam (after 1622–ca. Though he still derived subjects from Dou, he now drew inspiration from the Haarlem genre painter Adriaen van Ostade (1610–85), whose work found particular favor in Leiden. After 1658, the year Van Mieris joined the Leiden Guild of Saint Luke, however, he increasingly distanced himself from his teacher. He most likely produced other early work while in Dou’s workshop, including Elderly Couple in an Interior from The Leiden Collection ( fig 2). Van Mieris initially worked in the style of his master his Kitchen Maid Drawing Water from a Well made before 1655 is even a literal copy of an original by Dou. This essay examines these buyers, specifically the four whom Houbraken deemed to be the artist’s most important patrons: Isaac Gerard (1616–94), Franciscus de le Boë Sylvius (1614–72), Cornelis Paets (1636–94), and the mysterious “Vredenburg.” Van Mieris vis-à-vis Dou Van Mieris’s work, like that of his master, was exclusively in the reach of the elite and, given the prices he commanded, only the very wealthiest of them. Only one of them, however, ever attained his high level: Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635–81), “the prince of his pupils,” who, according to Dou, “carried off the crown from them all” ( fig 1).
Dou’s meticulous and detailed manner of painting exerted a great influence on scores of young and ambitious local artists. After Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–69) moved to Amsterdam in 1631, his pupil Gerrit Dou (1613–75) soon took over his master’s prominent position as Leiden’s leading painter.
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