Made to Order
On-Demand Printing
All products are produced on-demand, in accordance with stringent production protocols designed to ensure consistent and superior quality.
Willem van Mieris (Dutch, 1662-1747), An African Woman, circa 1710-1715. Oil on panel. New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum purchase, Alvin and Carol Merlin Acquisition Fund and Deaccessioned Art Fund.
Willem van Mieris, the son of fijnschilder (fine painter) Frans van Mieris (1635-1681), established a successful painting practice in Leiden. His depiction of the beautiful young African woman with a proud, regal bearing appears to be a miniature portrait, but it is likely a tronie - an imaginary portrait based on a live model, often wearing an elaborate costume. Van Mieris was probably familiar with the most famous tronie of the previous century: Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (c. 1665). Van Mieris’s painting is an exceptionally individualized representation, yet we know nothing about the woman who modeled for the painting. Africans, free or enslaved, were rarely recorded in the Netherlands during this period, and very few Dutch artists painted singular African subjects. Yet the Dutch West India Company enslaved at least half a million people from West Africa between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, forcing them into labor in Caribbean and North and South American colonies. The Dutch Republic profited enormously from this international slave trade during the so-called Golden Age.
