A Mother Feeding her Child (The Happy Mother)

Painting and Sculpture of Europe

1707

Willem van Mieris (Dutch, 1662–1747)

Willem van Mieris employed the highly finished, enamel-like technique known as “fine painting” to achieve a surface that shows no obvious traces of brushwork. In this scene of domestic life, Van Mieris deftly translated highlights on the cane bassinet and ceramic pitcher on the table with the tip of his brush. While painters like Gerard ter Borch and Caspar Netscher reserved this time-consuming style for rare and expensive textiles like silk, Van Mieris applied it to more commonplace materials.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Willem van Mieris
Title: A Mother Feeding her Child (The Happy Mother)
Place: Holland (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1707
Medium: Oil on panel
Inscriptions: Inscribed center: W. van Mieris. Fe Anno 1707 (along top of bed)
Dimensions: 56.9 × 48.4 cm (22 3/8 × 19 1/16 in.); Framed: 83.2 × 74.6 × 6.4 cm (32 3/4 × 29 3/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Edson Keith
Reference Number: 1890.42
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/497/manifest.json

Johan van Gool, De nieuwe schouburg der Nederlantsche kunstschilders en schilderessen (The Hague, 1750), p. 193–94.
Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van schilderyen (The Hague, 1752; reprint Soest, 1976), p. 361, no. 73.
“Famous Pictures for Chicago,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 3, 1890 in scrapbooks maintained by Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Art Institute of Chicago.
“Notes on Current Art,” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 6, 1890, p. 32.
“Chicago an Art Center,” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 9, 1890, p. 1.
V. V. H., “Inventaires de tableaux dressés par Spruyt,” in Messager des Sciences Historiques, ou Archives des Arts et de la Bibliographie de Belgique (Ghent, 1892), p. 247, no. 64.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Objects in the Museum (Chicago, 1901), pp. 142–43, no. 8.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Objects in the Museum (Chicago, 1904), pp.148–49, no. 8.
Art Institute of Chicago, Important Facts Regarding the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago, 1905), pp. 2, ill., 9.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Sculpture, Paintings and other Objects (Chicago, 1907), p. 159–60.
Art Institute of Chicago, Catalogue of Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture and Architecture (Chicago, 1917), p. 112, no. 8.
Art Institute of Chicago, Handbook of sculpture, architecture, paintings, and drawings, part 2 (Chicago, 1920), p. 18, no. 8.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago, 1925), p. 146, no. 8.
C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, vol. 10 (Stuttgart and Paris, 1928), p. 166, no. 233.
H. Gerson, “Mieris, Willem van,” in Thieme-Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der Bildenden Künstler 24 (Liepzig, 1930), p. 541.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection (Chicago, 1932), p. 163.
Marie-Rose Thielemans, “Un inventaire: La galerie des tableaux d’Emmanuel Vander Meersche de Berlaere en 1787,” in Revue Belge d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art 26 (1957), p. 192, no. 64.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 311.
C. Wansink, “Hieronymus van der Mij als historie- en genreschilder,” Oud Holland 99 (1985), pp. 204–05, fig. 6.
Peter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America (Grand Rapids, 1986), pp. 48, 53.
Eddy de Jongh and Ger Luijten, “Impressions of reality: genre prints in the Netherlands, 1550-1700” in Mirror of everyday life: Genre prints in the Netherlands 1550-1700, exh. cat., Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1997, p. 21, fig. 40.
Wayne Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (New Haven, 2004), pp. 227–28, 230, fig. 206.
Celia Hilliard, “‘The Prime Mover’: Charles L. Hutchinson and the Making of the Art Institute of Chicago,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 36, 1 (2010), p. 43.

Art Institute of Chicago, December 1893–January 1894, no. 156.
Indianapolis, John Herron Art Museum, Dutch Paintings, Etchings, Drawings, Delftware of the Seventeenth Century, February 27–April 11, 1937, no. 45.

David Grenier, Middleburg, until 1712; sold at auction, Middleburg, August 18, 1712, no. 73 for 32 florins [price given by Hoet 1752]. Jacques Clemens, canon of St. Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent (died 1779); sold in his estate sale, Ghent, June 21, 1779, no. 170 for 457 florins to Rijsschoot [according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague]. Emanuel-Augustin-Joseph van den Meersche, by 1791; sold in his sale, Salle de la Confrerie de St. George, Ghent, July 12, 1791, lot 103 for £335 to Rijschot [according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in Bibliothèque des Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels]. Countess Vilain XIV (died 1853), castle of Wetteren, by 1827 [according to the introduction of the catalogue of the May 2, 1857 sale of the collection of le Comte Philippe Vilain XIV]; at her death to her husband le Comte Philippe Vilain XIV (died 1856); sold in his sale, Pillet, Paris, May 2, 1857, no. 7 for 12,300 francs to the Marquis de Rhodes [price and buyer according to an annotated copy of the sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague]. Presumably Prince Anatole Demidoff, Villa San Donato, near Florence (died 1870); by descent to his nephew Prince Paul Demidoff (died 1885) and later to Paul Demidoff’s widow Helena Troubetskoi, Pratolino, near Florence [according to an entry in William French’s 1889 travel notebook dated April 19, 1889, the painting was on view with the Demidoff collection in Pratolino, Art Institute archives]; included in the group of 13 paintings from the Demidoff collection sold to trustees of the Art Institute through Durand-Ruel, Paris in 1890; purchase price reimbursed by Edson Keith, 1890.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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