#van mieris

Brothel Scene,  c. 1658 - 1659, by Frans van Mieris the Elder

Vermeer e altri Maestri in mostra a Dublino

Dal 17 giugno 2017 alla National Gallery of Ireland, a Dublino, si terrà una notevole mostra contenente quadri di Vermeer e altri grandi Maestri fiamminghi e olandesi.

Artisti e dipinti

Questa mostra approfondisce gli scambi artistici tra Johannes Vermeer e i suoi contemporanei dal 1650 al 1675, periodo nel quale hanno raggiunto la maturità tecnica. La mostra raccoglie circa 75 opere di Vermeer,…

Cornelis Ploos van Amstel (Dutch, 1726–1798) and Cornelis Brouwer (Dutch, c. 1733–1803), after Frans van Mieris (Dutch, 1635–1681)

Lying Dog 1777 Etching; transfer technique National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.56424.html

Seated Dog 1777 Etching; transfer technique National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/Collection/art-object-page.56423.html

Museum Dogs returns! Posts will be spotty for the next few days, but we will get back to the usual daily posts next week.

We are picking up this week with some eighteenth-century etchings by a seventeenth-century artist. The etchings focus on some Very Important dogs found in earlier paintings.

The printmakers were Cornelis Ploos van Amstel and Cornelis Brouwer. Ploos van Amstel was an artist, writer, and copyist. He was also a wood merchant and collector of old master drawings in Amsterdam. He came up with new methods of making facsimiles of drawings (“prenttekening”), and published many of of them. He worked with other printmakers who were obliged to keep the newly invented techniques secret.[i] Cornelis Brouwer was an engraver, etcher, draftsman and illustrator who worked for Ploos van Amstel, and he must have been the fellow to make the drawing and etch the plate.[ii]

In 1756, Ploos van Amstel started messing around with etching techniques that could reproduce the soft lines of crayon and chalk drawings. His method, one of a number of similar processes, became known as "sand-grain." In that process, an etching plate is prepared with a greasy ground and then covered with a piece of paper. Glued to the back of the paper is a hard, powdered material such as sand or copper filings. The artist then draws on the paper, and the hard particles on the back of the paper press the image into the ground on the etching plate. Touch-ups would be made with a roulette, a tool that makes a dotted tone on the plate. The print made from the sand-grain etched plate will have the soft, finely dotted lines of a chalk drawing.[iii] That pebbly texture is very much in evidence in today’s etchings. Indeed, at first glance, they are indistinguishable from chalk drawings.

Today’s etchings are based on dogs found in paintings by Frans van Mieris, a Dutch painter who lived and worked 100 years before Ploos van Amstel and Brouwer. He was the preeminent member of a family of artists—his father was a goldsmith and gem carver, and his sons and a grandson went on to be painters as well. Van Mieris studied with Gerrit Dou and, like his teacher, worked in the style of the fijnschilders (fine painters). Like his fellow fijnschilders, van Mieris made small, finely detailed paintings in bright colors and shiny finishes. He is best known for genre scenes of everyday Dutch life in various social classes. He was very successful in his lifetime but, alas, mismanaged his money and spent it all on drink.[iv]

The little spaniel in Lying Dog is from van Mieris's 1680 painting The Letter Writer:

Frans van Mieris Dutch, 1635–1681 The Letter Writer 1680 Oil on panel 25 x 20 cm Rijskmuseum, Amsterdam http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.9111 

Alas, I can’t find the painting by van Mieries that features the spaniel in the print Seated Dog, which is very frustrating. Readers, I turn to you to help find this dog! Please send a message if you can identify the original painting.

Regardless of their provenance, the spaniels as rendered in the etchings are fine examples of noble doghood, doing What Dogs Do Best, namely, snoozing and looking intently at something. The seated pup could very well be giving her person the questioning head tilt or maybe a guilt-inducing look. The sleeping spaniel, meanwhile, is uninterested in anything but relaxation—always an excellent pursuit.

. . .

Most of van Mieris paintings include dogs, and they are all really great. I highly recommend searching out images of his work. A particularly amazing pup by van Mieries is the Little White Hairy Dog in Jeroboam's Wife with the Prophet Ahijah:

Frans van Mieris Dutch, 1635–1681 Jeroboam's Wife with the Prophet Ahijah 1671 Oil on panel 24 x 20 cm Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille

Notes

[i] British Museum, "Cornelis Ploos van Amstel," artist biography.

[ii] British Museum, "Cornelis Brouwer," artist biography.

[iii] Gerald W. R. Ward, ed., The Grove Encyclopedia of Materials and Techniques in Art (New York: Oxford University press, 2008), p. 212; David Platzker and Elizabeth Wyckoff, Hard Pressed: 600 Years of Prints and Process (New York: Hudson Hills Press, 2000), p. 23.