A Merry Toper

Willem van Mieris was one of two sons of the celebrated feinmaler Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681), both of whom followed in their father’s footsteps. Willem became highly successful in his own right and he kept the torch of his father’s legacy burning with works that celebrated Frans’s meticulous style and witty subjects, of which this small signed and dated panel is an excellent example. The pose of the sitter is based on Frans van Mieris’s Old Violinist in the collection of Eyk and Rose-Marie de Mol van Otterloo, which similarly features a still life of a violin and crabs. Throughout his career, Frans the Elder painted male tronies or head studies using his own face. He often painted himself in fancy dress reminiscent of the theatre, grimacing at the viewer and clasping a large wine-filled roemer. His son Willem was obviously fond of these intimate works with their light-hearted self-mocking and here he gives his own interpretation. Pictures like this stand midway between head studies and fully-fledged genre scenes. This drinker is also recognisable as Frans van Mieris, which would have added extra charm, especially to collectors for whom the rare and highly-prized pictures by Frans were unattainable. This work can be compared with Willem van Mieris’s signed and dated ‘1683’ Painter with a Pipe and Berkemeier in a Niche, which sold at Fryasse & Associés in Paris on 24 November 2016, lot 173 (€220,000).