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Leiden ‘Fine’ painters [Leidse fijnschilders].
Name given to a number of Dutch painters, active in Leiden c. 1630 to c. 1760. They are known for their small paintings, principally genre scenes, full of minute detail and executed in a polished style. The most famous and influential practitioners of this school were GERRIT DOU and his pupil Frans van Mieris the elder (see MIERIS, VAN, (1)). Although the term was first used c. 1850, artists such as Dou, Frans van Mieris, Pieter van Slingeland (also a pupil of Dou), Frans’s son Willem van Mieris and the latter’s son Frans van Mieris the younger were apparently already being praised for those same qualities in their own time. Other contemporary sources suggest that the tradition of Dou’s art was continued by Frans the elder and van Slingeland, that the art of Frans, in turn, lived on through the work of his sons Jan and Willem, and that Willem was imitated by Frans the younger. It may thus be assumed that they were, to some extent at least, aware of the fact that they resembled each other in style and subject-matter. From the beginning they were admired for their ‘neat’ and ‘elaborate’ manner of painting, and the general reaction was one of wonder and amazement at the astonishing virtuosity and perfection of their small-scale paintings.
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