Portrait of a Man with a Cane, a Young Black Servant and a Dog

Behind the man in the red velvet cloak stand two figures a Dutch viewer of the 1670s would have read as part of his portrait, a greyhound and a young Black servant. Both spoke of his standing. In those years the Dutch West India Company was carrying enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, and some wealthy households in the Republic had Black boys and young men in their service, often brought back from the colonies. Painters included them as a mark of the master's wealth, much as they included a fine dog or costly clothes, and they were almost never named. Whether a boy like this was free or enslaved usually went unrecorded, and nothing at all is known about this one. The man is unidentified too.

Van Mieris signed the panel on the balustrade, and the Louvre dates it to about 1672 or 1673. It may once have hung beside a portrait of a woman, comparable to his Woman with a Small Dog of 1672, now in the Thyssen museum in Madrid. Its later owners included the Amsterdam collector Gerrit Braamcamp, and by 1785 it belonged to Louis XVI.