Portrait of an elegant lady

Frans van der Mijn

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Van der Mijn came from a family of Dutch artists and his father, Herman van der Mijn (ca. 1684-1741), arrived in London around 1721 from Antwerp. After a childhood in London, Frans worked in Amsterdam and The Hague in the seventeen forties and fifties, returning to London to exhibit annually at the Society of Artists between 1761 and 1772. This charming portrait resembles a grisaille oil now at the Rijksmuseum dated 1756. In keeping with much British portraiture of the period, an underlying naturalism (in this case Dutch), is enhanced by stylistic touches and exotic elements that hint at allegory and demonstrate admiration for French art—a combination that predominated in 18th century London until the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, and interest in Italian sources renewed.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art