Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior
Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)ca. 1654–57
oil on canvas
82.6 x 68.7 cm
indistinctly signed in light paint on wall mirror,
center: “___ETSU”
GM-102© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior
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How to cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. “Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed.
Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/an-old-woman-ather-meal-in-an-interior/ (archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrativeoccurs.

Gabriel Metsu’s move from his native Leiden to Amsterdam in the[1]mid-1650s had a considerable impact on the character of his paintings.

Comparative Figures

InAmsterdam he shifted his attention from biblical, mythological, and literary
subjects to scenes of domestic life. Moreover, instead of large-scale canvas
supports, he started using panels of modest dimensions, which he painted
with a softer and more delicate touch than the broad and fluid brushwork of
his Leiden period. These changes, however, evolved gradually and did notoccur overnight. Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior is a fascinating
painting that shares stylistic and thematic qualities of both his Leiden andAmsterdam periods, which indicates that he likely executed it soon after hearrived in Amsterdam.
Much as with his early Leiden-period history paintings, Metsu has here useda canvas support. The painting’s size (81.9 x 69.2 cm) does not match theFig 1. Gerrit Dou, An Old Woman
at Prayer before Her Meal, ca.
1645–50, oil on panel, 27.7 x 28.3
cm, Bayerische
Staatsgemäldesammlungen, AltePinakothek, Munich, inv. 588, bpk,
Berlin / Alte Pinakothek / Art
Resource, NY

scale of his most ambitious works (see, for example, GM-101, fig. 1), but it is
the largest of his early Amsterdam-period paintings. Its broad and fluid
brushwork shares qualities with works by Jan Baptist Weenix (1621–60/61),
an artist Metsu seems to have known when he was in Utrecht in the early
1650s.[2] Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior is one of the last works Metsu
painted in which Weenix’s influence still reverberates, but the painting also
includes a number of carefully rendered areas, including the old woman’shands, the earthenware plate, the half-cut bread, and the glass on the floor,
all indicating an evolution in his manner of painting.

Fig 2. Gabriel Metsu, TwelfthNight, 1653–55, oil on canvas,
80.9 x 97.9 cm, Bayerische
Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior
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Interestingly, Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior relates to the types ofinterior genre scenes that Gerrit Dou (1613–75) depicted in the second half

Pinakothek, Munich, inv. 871, bpk,
Berlin / Alte Pinakothek / Art
Resource, NYof the 1640s, subjects that were of no interest to Metsu when he was inLeiden. Only after he moved to Amsterdam did Metsu begin painting scenes
with themes inspired by Dou, either on his own initiative, having spotted agap in the Amsterdam art market, or to meet explicit demands from local
collectors for paintings with a “Leiden” character.[3] The present painting, forexample, is thematically and compositionally related to Dou’s An Old Woman
at Prayer before Her Meal from the early 1640s (fig 1). In these two paintings
an elderly female, accompanied by her pet, is shown seated at a tripod tableladen with food. Both scenes are set in a modest interior filled with an arrayof household items lying on the floor or hanging on the wall. The wooden
panel support that Dou used for his painting, however, is about one-seventh
the size of Metsu’s canvas, and Dou executed his picture in a meticulous
technique that is fundamentally different from Metsu’s fluid brushwork.
Metsu’s and Dou’s paintings differ in the artists’ use of light and color. Even
though Dou’s work has a relatively strong light and dark contrast, Metsu
deepened this effect to a near-chiaroscuro with a spotlighted circle on thewooden floor. Moreover, he reduced the number and the intensity of brightcolor areas. The result is a more tranquil image with a stronger focus on thecenter of the composition. The same combination of more evocative lighting
and monochrome coloring can be seen in some early works by Nicolaes
Maes (1634–93). This artist began painting old women and kitchen maids
soon after he returned to his native Dordrecht after training with Rembrandt
van Rijn (1606–69) in Amsterdam. These similarities in style suggest that
Metsu traveled to Dordrecht to study some of Maes’s paintings, although thechronology of their works from the mid-1650s is uncertain.[4] It may be that
bothartists

independently

transformed

Dou’sworkinaslightly

Rembrandtesque manner. Though not a student of Rembrandt, Metsu had
incorporated stylistic and thematic borrowings from paintings by theAmsterdam master as early as 1653.[5]Metsu was not the only painter that followed Dou in depicting old women in
humble interiors. Various artists from Leiden and surrounding areas
repeatedly painted this figure type—with dark, penetrating eyes, prominent
cheekbones, and pouting lips—in modest interiors.[6] Metsu first depicted thisparticular model in his Twelfth Night of 1653–55 (fig 2), and she reappears a
number of times in Metsu’s works of his early Amsterdam period—selling
pancakes, reading a book, feeding a dog, eating porridge, and combing ayoung woman’s hair.[7] All these latter works are smaller and slightly more
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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refined in execution than Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior, suggestingthat Metsu completed them slightly later. Remarkably, he continued
representing this same old woman into the mid-1660s.[8]Metsu’s image of an old woman eating by herself indicates that she was awidow. Elderly women who had outlived their husbands were popularsubjects in both the visual arts and contemporary literature. In the lastchapter of his Houwelyck (1625), entitled “Weduwe” (Widow), Jacob Cats(1577–1660) discussed widows as exemplars of life’s transience andencouraged them to concentrate on spiritual matters rather than earthly
ones.[9] Cats also associated widows with sobriety and modesty, and advised
them to refrain from extravagance, even with regard to food. A passage from
Consolation Letter of Widows (1630) by Pieter Iansz Twisck (1565–1636),
originally a letter the Mennonite author had sent to his recently widowed
sister-in-law, also reflects such expectations:
The greatest honor and praise for widows is moderation in all her doings:
moderation not only in food, in the care of her body, in her clothing,demeanor, and behavior but also with regard to her family, when she isin the presence of other people, in front of authorities and her familiar
friends.[10]Contemporary viewers would have associated the widow’s meal of meat,cheese and bread with sobriety and moderation, a notion reinforced by themodest interior and the way she tilts her head slightly forward to suggest ahumble demeanor.
Metsu gave the scene a religious undertone by including a glass of red wineon the floor and a piece of bread on the tripod table, Eucharistic associations
that accord with Metsu’s Catholic religious beliefs.[11] Metsu’s most overt
Catholic painting, Saint Dorothy, from the mid-1660s, depicts the saintexpressing her loyalty to Christ at an altar surrounded by an abundance ofCatholic paraphernalia, including a ciborium, a large covered cup designed
to hold the Host for the celebration of the Eucharist.[12] The reference to theChristian sacrament in Metsu’s Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior issubtle by comparison.

- Adriaan Waiboer, 2017
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior
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1. On the date of Metsu’s move from Leiden to Amsterdam, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, “TheEarly Years of Gabriel Metsu,” Burlington Magazine 147 (2005): 90, and Adriaan E. Waiboer,
Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 7–8.
2. On Metsu’s relationship with Weenix, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, “The Early Years of GabrielMetsu,” Burlington Magazine 147 (2005): 89–90; Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life andWork: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 23–24; Melanie E. Gifford, “Fine Paintingand Eloquent Imprecision: Gabriel Metsu’s Painting Technique,” in Gabriel Metsu, ed. Adriaan
E. Waiboer (Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum;Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) (New Haven, 2010), 159–61.
3. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Review of Robinson 1974,” Art Bulletin 58 (1976): 458, suggested
that Metsu’s interest in Dou’s work after his move to Amsterdam may have been “aresponse to a market in Amsterdam for Dou-like paintings.” See also Pieter Roelofs, “EarlyOwners of Paintings by Metsu in Leiden and Amsterdam,” in Gabriel Metsu, ed. Adriaan E.
Waiboer (Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum;Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) (New Haven, 2010), 103–5, and Adriaan E.
Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 33–44.
4. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven,2012), 370 n. 6.
5. On Rembrandt’s influence on Metsu’s early work and in particular on his Christ and theWoman Taken in Adultery, dated 1653, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life andWork: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 19–20.
6. Rather than painting the same model, these Leiden artists, among them Frans van Mieris(1635–81), Quiringh van Brekelenkam (1622/29–69/79), Dominicus van Tol (1635–76), Jacobvan Spreeuwen (1611–after 1650), and Abraham de Pape (1620–66), depicted the same
figure type. Dou introduced her into his work in the 1630s, possibly as a variation of“Rembrandt’s mother,” a figure type Rembrandt and his followers painted repeatedly. On theconcept of Rembrandt’s mother, see Rembrandt’s Mother: Myth and Reality, ed. Christiaan
Vogelaar and Gerbrandt Korevaar (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle,2005).
7. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven,2012), 175–80, nos A-20, A-21, A-22, A-24, A-25, A-27, A-28, all ill.
8. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven,2012), 241–43, nos. A-97, A-98, A-99, A-100, all ill.
9. Jacob Cats, Houwelyck, dat is de gantsche ghelegentheyt des echten-staets (Middelburg,© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior
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10. This part of Troostbrief der weduwen by Twisck is quoted in Wayne E. Franits, Paragons ofVirtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Cambridge, 1993), 176,
243 n. 43 (original Dutch text). See chapter 4, “Weduwe,” of Franits’s book (161–94) for an
excellent description of Dutch paintings of widows and old women at home.
11. Although documentation is lacking, a handful of biographical facts suggest that the artist wasCatholic. Moreover, a number of his works have subjects or include elements that would haveresonated with a Catholic audience. For more on Metsu’s religion, see Adriaan E.
Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 10.
12. For more on Metsu’s Saint Dorothy, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A
Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 119, 254, no. A-114, ill.

ProvenanceAlexis-Joseph Febvre (1810–1881), Paris (his sale, Hotel Drouot, George, Le Roy, Lechat,Chevallier, Paris, 17–20 April 1882, no. 74 [for fr. 3,500 to possibly Elhnazaer]).
Collection M. Elhnazaer (sale, Musée Galliera, Ader, Couturier, Paris, 9 December 1961, no.
31).
Private collection, France, by 1971 (sale, Guignard, Hôtel des Ventes Gabriel, Lorient, 2 July
2000, not sold; sale, Mercier et Cie, Lille, 23 June 2002, no. 225 [Salomon Lilian, B.V.,
Amsterdam, and Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, 2002]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2003.

Exhibition History
Maastricht, European Fine Arts Fair, March 2003 [exhibited by Salomon Lilian, B. V.].
Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, “Gabriel Metsu,” 4 September–5 December 2010;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 16 December 2010–21 March 2011; Washington, National Galleryof Art, 10 April–24 July 2011, no. 36 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The
Leiden Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden
Age: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lent© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior
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Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the presentowner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by thepresent owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May
2019 [lent by the present owner].

References
Eudel, Paul. L’Hotel Drouot et la curiosité en 1882 avec une préface par M. Armand
Silvestre. 2 vols. Paris, 1883, 2: 248.
Robinson, Franklin W. Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre
Painting of the Golden Age. New York, 1974, 33, 80, fig. 57.
Weebers, W.P.J.A. Isack Mes, Genreschilder te Dordrecht: Zijn Leven en zijn Werk
1622–1668 (of eind 1667?). Nijmegen, 1976, 34, fig. 17.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “An Old Woman at Her Meal.” In Salomon Lilian Old Masters. Sales cat.
Amsterdam, Salomon Lilian, B.V. Zwolle, 2003, 42–47, no. 15.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): Life and Work.” 4 vols. PhD diss. NewYork University, 2007, 1: 107 n. 7, 108, 110–11; 2: 418–20, no. A-23; 4:1072.
Waiboer, Adriaan E., ed. Gabriel Metsu. Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington, National Gallery of Art. New Haven, 2010, 9–10, fig.
8; 195, no. 36.
Duparc, Frederik J., et al. Golden: Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie andEijk van Otterloo Collection. Exh. cat. Salem, Peabody Essex Museum; San Francisco, Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts. New Haven, 201, 202, 204,
no. 1.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven,
2012, 34, 175, no. A-20.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Rembrandt and His Time: China and the Dutch Republic in theGolden Age.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Editedby Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 10; 15, no. 48. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National
Museum of China. Beijing, 2017.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior.” In Rembrandt and His Time:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 116–17; 183, no.
48. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing, 2017.
Long Museum, West Bund. Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund.
Shanghai, 2017, 162–63.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In The Age ofRembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina
Lyubimova, 17, 25; 29, 33. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow,The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum.
Moscow, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior.” In The Age of Rembrandt andVermeer: Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 124–25; 237,
no. 29. Translated by Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin StateMuseum of Fine Arts; St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum. Moscow, 2018.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In Rembrandt,
Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and theMusée du Louvre. Edited by Blaise Ducos and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 25. Exh. cat. Abu
Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French andArabic.]
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch GoldenAge. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu
Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi. London, 2019, 160, no. 79. [Exhibition catalogue also published inFrench and Arabic.]

Technical Summary
The support, a single piece of medium-weight, plain-weave fabric, has been lined. All four tacking
margins have been removed, although remnants of the left and right tacking margins
remain. Cusping along all four sides—deep on the lower edge, shallow on the left, right, and upperedges—indicates that the composition’s dimensions have not been significantly altered.[1] A
vertical canvas tear along the lower left quadrant, to the left of the figure, was repaired prior tolining.[2] Remnants of paper tape from a previous lining are present along the canvas edges.
There is one handwritten inscription along the stretcher but no wax collection seals, stencils,labels or import stamps along the lining or stretcher.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied, and remains exposed along the left
and right tacking margin remnants. A blackish sketched outline, which remains visible below the© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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left edge of the skirt, appears to outline the foreground elements but not those along thebackground.[3] The paint appears to have been applied with a thin wash underpaint followed by amore opaque final paint. The opaque paint has been applied extremely smoothly with no use ofimpasto and almost entirely of monochrome ochers. The glass on the floor was added after thatarea was completed, as it overlaps the skirt and floor.[4] Very little of the composition is visible in
the X-radiograph aside from the white tablecloth draped over the table and the figure’s whitecollar.[5]No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at780–1000 nanometers or in the X-radiograph.
The painting is indistinctly signed in whitish-gray paint on the black wall mirror hanging along thecenter of the background. A fine network of drying cracks allows a light brown underlayer to show
through, which is darker and more pronounced than the whitish-gray paint of the signature andtherefore makes the signature difficult to read. Under magnification, the “M” is no longer visible,
but the “ETSU” remains clear.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2002 and remains in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. According to 2009 examination notes by E. Melanie Gifford, Scientific Department, National
Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
2. Approx. 7 cm long.
3. According to 2009 examination notes by E. Melanie Gifford, Scientific Department, National
Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
4. According to 2009 examination notes by E. Melanie Gifford, Scientific Department, National
Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
5. In raking light, only the canvas weave is apparent. There is no raised brushwork or raisedouter contours of the forms.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection