| Grouped with the best of the Leiden Fineschilders, Metsu produced an exceptionally wide range of subjects, most of which fit in the rubric of genre. About a dozen or so religious subjects, an occasional portrait, a few still lifes, as well as game bird pieces are also known. His surviving oeuvre of roughly 150 paintings is uneven in quality, and he seems to have worked in several styles simultaneously. Besides the finely painted manner he developed in Leiden, Metsu responded to the Delft school with more broadly executed and monumentally conceived pictures. His eclecticism has been justly criticized, but Metsu also deserves recognition for his diversity, his inventiveness, his keen observation, as well as his impact on eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury painters including Eglon van der Neer, Adriaen van der Werff,* and Jacob Toorenvliet. Born to Flemish parents transplanted to Leiden, Gabriel lost his father, the painter Jacques Metsu, just after his birth. Houbraken* tells us that Gabriel studied with Gerrit Dou,* an apprenticeship that must have taken place in the early 1640s. By 1648 Gabriel was among the founding members of the Leiden St. Luke's Guild. Absent from Leiden from about 1650 to 1652, he returned and lived there until 1657, when he moved to Amsterdam. The following year he married, and in 1659 he gained his citizenship. He lived in Amsterdam until his death in 1667 at the age of thirty-eight. His only known pupil was Michiel van Musscher. Active for roughly two decades, Metsu's first works were in the style of Dou. Later, we find him responding to the work of Jan Steen,* Nicolaus Knupfer, Jan Baptist Weenix,* as well as Ter Borch,' Vermeer,* and de Hooch.* Although he borrowed subject matter and styles, as well as pictorial devices, Metsu at his best always added something new and original. His earliest dated surviving picture, the Young Woman Spooling Thread (signed and dated 1645, St. Petersburg, Hermitage), adopts Dou's small-scale, domestic subject matter and fine manner of painting; yet the work is more directly observed (as if done from a model) than are Dou's pictures. By 1653 Metsu, like his contemporary, Vermeer, was experimenting with grandly conceived religious subjects (in the tradition of Lievens*). Metsu's Christ and the Adulterous Woman (signed and dated 1653, Paris, Louvre), is his largest surviving picture. A year later he signed and dated (1654) his Usurer (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), which, with its explicit drama, anticipates the moralizing genre subjects of the eighteenth century, particularly those of Jean Baptiste Greuze. Few other dated pictures elucidate his development. In 1659 he signed and dated a boisterous scene of a Music Party (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art), which owes something to Jan Steen. Two years later (1661) he signed and dated his much more subdued and dignified Visit to the Nursery (New York, Metropolitan Museum of An), revealing his response to the work of Ter Borch. That same year he signed and dated his less elevated but nonetheless restrained Tavern Scene (Dresden, Gemaidegalerie Alte Meister) featuring a hesitant girl and a leering cavalier. In 1662 he signed and dated two pendants showing poultry vendors (an old man and a young woman), both now in Dresden (GemSldegalerie). The pictures indicate his continued fascination with market scenes as well as his love of allegory. A year later Metsu painted the Woman Playing the Viola da Gamba (San Francisco, M. H. De Young Museum), a wonderful conflation of spontaneous action and meticulous execution. Five years later he signed and dated several more pictures that indicate his broad narrative interests. Woman in a Blue Satin Dress (location unknown) is the epitome of elevated refinement, while his Tavern Scene (Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle) is a more informal if polite look at courtship. His Noli Me Tangere (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum) is one of his last religious subjects; van Dyck* might have been the inspiration for this painting, which conveys a mood of restrained pathos. In many of his later pictures, the elegant style of The Hague and Amsterdam painters predominates. Around Metsu's dated pictures, his many undated works are grouped thematically. His early experiments with genre introduce his fascination with markets (note his poultry and fish vendors) but, more important, his interest in women. His pictures of women in brothels, women sewing, and women being courted indicate his preoccupation with them. He evolved his own distinctive subtext of women victimized by inferior or cruder men, as evidenced by his Usurer. Metsu's move to Amsterdam by 1657 signaled changes. His scale became smaller, he emphasized female domesticity, and he found new and unusual ways to couple yet contrast the male and female worlds. His pairing of letter-writing scenes underscores differences as well as similarities in the genders and is an inventive device to imply narrative sequence: see, for example, Man Writing a Letter (Montpellier, Mus6e Fabre) and Woman Receiving a Letter (San Diego, Timken Art Gallery). His Hunter's Gift (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) presents direct as well as subtle messages about the two sexes. While he combined complex allegory with direct observation in Artist Painting a Woman Playing a Cello (location unknown), Metsu in many instances subdued the symbolic to present a slice of life, as in Couple at Table (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). Often treating themes of illness (sometimes with licentious, sometimes with tragic overtones), Metsu was, on occasion, capable of genuine pathos. His Sick Child (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) is, despite its dependence on Nicolaes Maes,* one of the most genuinely conceived and deeply moving images of the entire century. |
