Self-portrait

Dated 1661 and once in the Adolphe Schloss collection — one of the great French private collections of Dutch and Flemish art assembled in the late nineteenth century — this early self-portrait represents Van Mieris at thirty-six, at the peak of his first productive phase. The Schloss collection was seized by the German occupiers in 1943 and dispersed; many works were subsequently recovered by France and are held as Musées Nationaux Récupération pending restitution. A self-portrait in the Dutch tradition was both a technical demonstration — the painter as his own most demanding and available model — and a statement of identity. Van Mieris's self-portraits consistently present him as a gentleman-artist, carefully dressed, with the composed authority of a man who considers himself the social equal of his patrons. The 1661 date makes this contemporary with the famous self-portrait at the National Trust dated 1667, and the two together document the artist's physical appearance across a significant span.

Panel with the smooth fijnschilder surface that permits facial modelling of the highest precision. The challenge of the self-portrait — working from a mirror image, sustaining concentration under reversed left-right perception — is met with characteristic control. Dress is rendered with the same textile analysis applied to portrait subjects, the artist declining any self-deprecating simplicity of costume.