Frans was born and died in Leiden, where his father Jan Bastiaans van Mieris was a goldsmith, carver of rubies and diamond setter.

His eye was fascinated in turn by the sheen of jewelry and stained glass; and, though he soon left Toorenvliet for the workshops of Gerard Dou and Abraham van den Tempel, he acquired the Leiden fijnschilder manner over the Amsterdam finish of the disciples of Rembrandt.

Unlike Dou when he first left Rembrandt, or Jan Steen when he started on an independent career, Mieris never ventured to design figures as large as life.

[2] The subjects which he treated best are those in which he illustrated the habits or actions of the wealthier classes; but he sometimes succeeded in homely incidents and in portrait, and not infrequently he ventured on allegory.

Another beautiful example, the "Doctor Feeling a Lady's Pulse" in the gallery of Vienna, is dated 1656; and Waagen, in one of his critical essays, justly observes that it is a remarkable production for a youth of twenty-one.

Of the numerous panels by Mieris, at least twenty-nine (such as Young Woman Stringing Pearls) are dated—the latest being an allegory, long in the Ruhl collection at Cologne, illustrating what he considered the kindred vices of drinking, smoking and dicing, in the year 1680.