The Poultry Seller

Willem van Mieris was the last master of the Leiden fijnschilder tradition, the painstaking school of fine painters founded by his father Frans and by Gerrit Dou. Painted in 1733, The Poultry Seller shows the smooth, jewel-like finish that kept the Leiden manner alive into the eighteenth century, long after Dutch genre painting had fallen out of fashion elsewhere. Van Mieris’s fastidious technique and porcelain-figure elegance made him one of the most expensive Dutch painters of his day, prized by collectors who wanted the Golden Age carried forward one more generation.