Portrait of Magtilda Muilman

Magtilda Muilman sits at home with a cup of tea or coffee in her hand, looking straight at us in a satin gown trimmed with ermine tails. Van der Mijn painted her in the mid-1740s as a companion to the portrait of her husband, Jan Pranger, and the two canvases hang side by side in the museum. The museum points to the contrast. Pranger stands in his study with the slave fort of Elmina, where he had been director, visible through the window. She is placed in a domestic interior, probably their house on the Singel canal in Amsterdam. On the table stand a tall ewer and a dish of fruit, and a doorway opens onto a cabinet hung with paintings, including a portrait that may show one of her ancestors. Van der Mijn signed at the lower left, F Van der Mij.