A Mother Feeding her Child (The Happy Mother)

A mother feeds her child in a quiet domestic interior, the cane bassinet, ceramic pitcher and bright highlights on the table rendered in the enamel-like, brushwork-free finish that the Leiden painters called fine painting. Willem van Mieris, son of the celebrated Frans van Mieris the Elder, applied this laborious technique — which contemporaries such as Gerard ter Borch and Caspar Netscher reserved for rare silks — to the most commonplace materials, raising everyday domesticity to the level of the fijnschilders’ art. Sold at auction in Middelburg in 1712, the panel passed through the collections of the canon Jacques Clemens of Ghent, the van den Meersche family and the Vilain XIV family before entering the Demidoff collection near Florence, from which it was sold in 1890 to the trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago through Durand-Ruel; the price was reimbursed by Edson Keith. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.