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A Mother Feeding her Child (The Happy Mother)
Willem van Mieris (Dutch, 1662–1747)
1707
- Medium
- Oil on panel
- Classification
- Painting
- 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.)
- Culture
- Holland
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
- Credit line
- Gift of Edson Keith
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In this scene of domestic life, 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. 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. Here, for instance, the artist deftly applied highlights to the cane bassinet and ceramic pitcher on the table with the tip of his brush.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
