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Gabriël Metsu

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Couple enjoying a meal, most probably Gabriel Metsu and his wife. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

Gabriel Metsu (January 1629, Leiden - buried Oct 24 1667, Amsterdam), Dutch painter, was the son of the Flemish painter Jacques Metsu (c.1588-1629), who lived most of his days at Leiden, where he was three times married. The last of these marriages was celebrated in 1625, and Jacomijntje Garniers, herself the widow of a painter with already three children, gave birth to Gabriel.

Life

According to Houbraken Metsu was taught by Gerard Dou, though his early works do not lend colour to this assertion. He was influenced by painters in Leiden like Jan Steen and Jan Lievens, later by Frans van Mieris the Elder.

Metsu was registered among the first members of the painters' corporation at Leiden; and the books of the guild also tell us that he remained a member in 1649. In 1650 he ceased to subscribe, and works bearing his name and the date of 1653 support the belief that he had moved to Amsterdam. In Leiden it was told Metsu left a brothel at six in the morning and took a prostitute to the Academia. Before he moved to Amsterdam Metsu was trained in Utrecht by Jan Baptist Weenix and Nicolaus Knüpfer.

In Amsterdam Metsu lived in an alley on Prinsengracht, where he kept chickens. He got into an argument with a neighbor and moved to a house on the canalside, where a daily vegetable market was held. In 1658 he married Isabella de Wolff, whose father was a potter, her mother a painter. (Pieter de Grebber, a religious painter from Haarlem was her brother). The Speed Art Museum has a portrait of the couple.

Around the year 1661 Metsu won the protection of the Amsterdam cloth merchant Jan J. Hinlopen and painted his family more than once in a fashionable surrounding. After Metsu died his widow left for Enkhuizen, to live with her mother.

Gabriel Metsu, The Sick Child (Rijksmuseum)

Works

One of his earliest pictures is the "Lazarus" at the Strassburg Museum, painted under the influence of Jan Steen. In 1653 under the influence of Rembrandt he painted "Woman taken in Adultery," a large picture which is now in the Louvre. To the same period belong the "Departure of Hagar," formerly in the Thore collection, and the "Widow's Mite" at the Schwerin Gallery. But he probably observed that sacred art was ill suited to his temper, or he found the field too strongly occupied, and turned to other subjects for which he was better fitted. That at one time he was deeply impressed by the vivacity and bold technique of Frans Hals can be gathered from Lord Lonsdale's picture of "Women at a Fishmonger's Shop."

What Metsu undertook and carried out from the first with surprising success was the low life of the market and tavern, contrasted, with wonderful versatility, by incidents of high life and the drawing-room. In no single instance do the artistic lessons of Rembrandt appear to have been lost upon him. The same principles of light and shade which had marked his schoolwork in the "Woman taken in Adultery" were applied to subjects of quite a different kind. A group in a drawing-room, a series of groups in the market-place, or a single figure in the gloom of a tavern or parlour, was treated with the utmost felicity by fit concentration and gradation of light, a warm flush of tone pervading every part, and, with that, the study of texture in stuffs was carried as far as it had been by Ter Borch or Gerard Dou, if not with the finish or the brio of De Hooch.

One of the best pictures of Metsu's manhood is the "Market-place of Amsterdam," at the Louvre, respecting which it is difficult to distribute praise in fair proportions, so excellent are the various parts, the characteristic movement and action of the dramatis personae, the selection of faces, the expression and the gesture, and the texture of the things depicted. Equally fine, though earlier, are the "Sportsman" (dated 1661) and the "Tavern" (also 1661) at the Hague and Dresden Museums, and the "Game-Dealer's Shop," also at Dresden, with the painter's signature and 1662.

File:Gabriel Metsu 001.jpg
Gabriel Metsu, Man Writing a Letter (1662-1665), Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Among the five examples of the painter in the Wallace Collection, are "The Tabby Cat," and "The Sleeping Sportsman," which cost Lord Hertford £ 3000, is an admirable example technically considered. Among his finest representations of home life are the "Repast" at the Hermitage in St Petersburg; the "Mother nursing her Sick Child" in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; the "Amateur Musicians" at the Hague Gallery; the "Duet" and the "Music Lesson" at the National Gallery, London; the "Een jonge vrouw die muziek schrijft" in the Mauritshuis, and many more examples at nearly all the leading European galleries. Five of his painting are in Dresden, collected by August the Strong.

Two paintings by Metsu

One of the two paintings by Gabriel Metsu belonging to Hinlopen does depict the Hinlopen family. That one is in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie. Whether or not the one in the New York Metropolitan Museum is also depicting Hinlopen and his wife is still not clear. Arnold Houbraken, in 1721, recalled the latter painting as the largest and finest work by Metsu he had ever seen.[1]

There is still some confusion among art historians about the history of one of the paintings by Metsu, now in the Gemäldegalerie. Besides it is not clear if this painting is a genre work or a portrait.[2] After the Geelvinck family ceased to exist in the early 19th century, the traces to the real origins were lost. The Swiss family Tschiffely sold the painting in 1832. In the end of the 19th century it was known as depicting the Familie des Kaufmanns Gelfing.[3] In 1907 the known Dutch art-historian Hofstede de Groot mentioned the parrot in the painting of the Familie Geelvinck. Remarkably he described the painting as langweilig (= boring).[4] In 1984 also Bob Haak describes it as depicting the Geelvinck family.[5]

File:Metsu Gemaeldegalerie Berlin.jpg
The family Hinlopen by G. Metsu (1663)

In 1976 Van Eeghen renamed the painting to De familie van burgemeester Gillis Valckenier, and dated it in 1657.[6] This was mainly based on the bird in the painting, which van Eeghen imagined to be a falcon. Irene Groeneweg reasons that the bird, held by the boy, is a Cuban Amazon parrot.[7] Another reason to doubt the classification is that, according to the Amsterdam City Archives, burgomaster Gillis Valckenier had only three children at the time of the paintings creation.[8]

Judith van Gent discovered that there was a resemblance with Hinlopen's on the works of Bartholomeus van der Helst and the family, depicted by Metsu on the painting in Berlin. Additionally she discovered support for her view in Hinlopens will.[9] Nevertheless the painting is still and erroneously referred to as: The Family of burgomaster Gillis Valckenier.[10]

The painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, called A Visit to the Nursery, dated 1661, may depict the family Hinlopen. According to Walter Liedtke there is some general resemblance. The scene is set in an imaginary room. The chimney resembles the one in the former Amsterdam townhall, also painted by Pieter de Hoogh.[11] A guest is greeted by the new mother and her hat-doffing husband. There is a seascape on the wall and Persian carpets on the table and the floor.[12] The dog in the painting could be a Bolognese.

The history of this painting is well-known, except for between the years 1666 and 1706.[13] In 1662 Jan Vos published a poem about this painting, belonging to Jan J. Hinlopen.[14] Most of Jan Hinlopen's collection passed to his daughters. In 1680, after the burial of his brother and guardian Jacob J. Hinlopen his paintings were divided in lots and given to his daughters [15] but none of the paintings or painters are mentioned.

Notes

  1. ^ Houbraken 1718-1721, vol. 3, p. 41.
  2. ^ An impression of the painting can be found here.
  3. ^ Meyers Konversationlexicon (1885-1892) (In German.) Gelfing should be understood as the family Geelvinck.
  4. ^ Hofstede de Groot, C. (1907) Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke des hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, p. 327.
  5. ^ B. Haak (1984) Hollandse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw, p. 490.
  6. ^ Van Eeghen, I.H. (1976) De familiestukken van Metsu van 1657 en van De Witte van 1678 met vier levensgeschiedenissen (Gillis Valckenier, Nicolaas Listing, Jan Zeeuw en Catharina van de Perre; In: Jrb Amstelodamum, pp. 78-82. (In Dutch.) Valckenier being the Dutch form of falconer.
  7. ^ Groeneweg, I. (1995) Regenten in het zwart: vroom en deftig? In: R. Falkenburg, e.a. (red) Beeld en zelfbeeld in de Nederlandse kunst, 1550-1750, pp. 200-4 (Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, dl. 46) (In Dutch.)
  8. ^ Birth certificates of six children from Gillis Valckenier and Jacoba Ranst
  9. ^ Van Gent, J. (1998) Portretten van Jan Jacobsz Hinlopen en zijn familie door Gabriël Metsu en Bartholomeus van der Helst. In: Oud Holland 112, pp. 127-138. (In Dutch.) Not. Justus van der Ven, 16 oktober 1663; Getty Provenance Index, N-1706.
  10. ^ Montias, J. M & J. Loughman (2000) Public and Private Spaces: Works of Art in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Houses, p. 113; Zandvliet, K. (2006) De 250 rijksten van de Gouden Eeuw, no. 117, p. 211.
  11. ^ Os, H. van (2002) Beeldenstorm in het Paleis op de Dam, p. 28-33.
  12. ^ Liedtke, W. (2007) Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 463.
  13. ^ Van Gent, p. 134-135, notes 20, 22. See also note 4 and check provenance. The "extraordinary pretty" painting was sold as no. 2 on May 18th, 1706 bringing up 435 guilders, for most people in those days a year salary.
  14. ^ Vos, J. (1662) p. 654.
  15. ^ RAU 67-59. Familiearchief Huydecoper, on 11/7/1679, 12/8/1679 and 2/22/1680.

Sources

  • Robinson, F.W. (1974) Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) a Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of the Golden Age.
  • Stone-Ferrier, L. (1989) Gabriel Metsu's Vegetable Market at Amsterdam: seventeenth century Dutch market paintings and horticulture. In: Art Bulletin Jrg. 71 (1989), nr. 3 (September)
  • Waiboer, A. (2005) The early years of Gabriel Metsu. In: The Burlington Magazine, No. 1223, Vol. CXLVII, p.80-90.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gabriel Metsu.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Metsu, Gabriel".
  • Man and Woman Sitting at the Virginal (1658-1660)
    Man and Woman Sitting at the Virginal (1658-1660)
  • Visit to the Nursery, after the birth of Sara Hinlopen (1661)
    Visit to the Nursery, after the birth of Sara Hinlopen (1661)
  • The birdseller (c. 1662)
    The birdseller (c. 1662)
  • The apple peeler (c. 1660-1667)
    The apple peeler (c. 1660-1667)
  • Woman playing a Viola de gamba (1663)
    Woman playing a Viola de gamba (1663)
  • Old woman selling fish
    Old woman selling fish
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