thumb|upright|Willem van Mieris (top) and his father Frans, illustration by Aert Schouman and Jacob Houbraken for [[Jan van Gool's Nieuwe Schouburg]]
Willem van Mieris (3 June 166226 January 1747) was an 18th-century painter from the Dutch Republic.
Biography
Willem van Mieris was a painter, sculptor and etcher active in Leiden. He was born in Leiden and studied under his father Frans van Mieris the Elder (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 (painters in the "fine manner"), and his genre works, especially later in his career, depicted scenes from upper-class society. He set out to uphold his father's reputation as a Leiden fijnschilder. 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 Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), a Dutch Golden Age painter. 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. Such a family background in art, good relationships with wealthy collectors and patrons, and apprenticeships with successful 17th-century masters seems to have made the choice of profession easier in families such as the Van Mierises. Willem, Jan, and Frans II, all direct descendants of the famous seventeenth century fine painter Frans I van Mieris, were bound for prestigious positions in the city, resulting in steady income from the commissions from affluent citizens.
Painters like Willem van Mieris reused not only their own figures, but also those present in paintings by the masters of the previous generations. This was again due to the necessity of pleasing the few patrons and collectors, who greatly admired the works of artists such as Gerard Dou, a member of the first generation of fijnschilders. Willem van Mieris explicitly refers to Dou in two different paintings the subject of which is almost directly borrowed from the eminent master. In this respect, Van Mieris proved to be discreet enough to carefully choose which elements to take from other painters' works in order not to be accused of plagiarism, which was already an issue at the time. In fact, specific guidelines had already been established about how to refer to paintings by previous masters without ending up with mere copies of their work, which were obviously despised as signs of the painter's incapability of producing a work on his own.
One of the major characteristics of Willem van Mieris' artistic style is his idealization of the female nude. Van Mieris' idea of beauty in genre paintings is deeply rooted in and modeled after his studies of classical sculpture. Between the years 1669 and 1702, Willem van Mieris made at least thirteen drawings on parchment modeled after van Bossuit's sculptures, believed to have been produced as works of art rather than preparatory studies for his history paintings. In van Mieris' painting Flora, which currently resides in the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, it is suggested that Agneta served as the model. In this painting, van Mieris disguises his wife as Flora, the ancient Roman goddess of flowers, fertility and spring. The inclusion of peonies helps signify feminine beauty and fertility, which is appropriate given the context of the painting's execution taking place only one year before Willem's and Agneta's wedding. A similar face, suggested to be modeled after Agneta's, reappears in many of van Mieris' early works, including Allegory of Arrogance from 1684, Old Man Seducing a Young Woman from 1683, Artemis Holding an Arrow from 1686, and Woman with a Bird Cage (Lesbia) from 1687. In his mansion in Leiden he devoted three separate rooms exclusively for the exhibition of his huge collection of paintings and other rooms contained more paintings.
No relationship between the two patrons has been established, except for an archival document from the eighteenth century, which testifies Van Wassenaer's intention to buy Dou's Grocer's Shop. Allard de la Court, who inherited most of his father's collection, describes Van Wassenaer's efforts to acquire the painting at a hefty price. This shows how much Van Wassenaer appreciated Dou's Grocer's Shop and it is possible that Van Mieris made his own version modelled closely after Dou's to please his patron.