Public Notaryca. 165(3?)

Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)oil on panel
41 x 32.5 cm
inscribed and dated in light-colored paint onsign, lower left: “openbaer Notarus / 165[3?]”GM-101
Currently on view at: Sterling and Francine
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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How To Cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. "Public Notary." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
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An old man with a full gray beard and wearing a red cloak stares directly at

Comparative Figures

the viewer as he leans out of an arched window set into a brownish-graystone building. His large, boney hands hold open a folio containing a
number of loose sheets of paper, as well as an official document with
attached wax seals. On the wooden sign hanging below the open shutter isan inscription that reads openbaer Notarus (public notary). The sign alsobears the year in which Gabriel Metsu completed the picture, one of only
fourteen extant paintings that are dated.[1] Unfortunately, the last digit isalmost illegible and cannot be clearly read.
Given the painting’s stylistic similarities to Christ and the Woman Taken in
Adultery in the Musée du Louvre, 1653 (fig 1), it seems probable thatFig 1. Gabriel Metsu, Christ andthe Woman Taken in Adultery,1653, oil on canvas, 134 x 165
cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv.
1459, Photo: Jean-Gilles Beirizzi,© RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NYMetsu executed this work in the same year.[2] The Louvre painting is alarge biblical scene on canvas, rather than a single-figure painting onpanel, but it has a comparable palette consisting of brownish-gray colors
combined with distinct areas of red and white. Moreover, the facial type
and posture of the notary with his raised shoulders is identical to that of thecentral Pharisee. Finally, the two paintings include finely executed large
folios, documents and seals similar to those that appear in other ofMetsu’s works from around 1653–54, including another depiction of thesame notary and Woman Reading a Book by a Window (GM-105).[3]Public Notary dates from the early period of Metsu’s career when he wasactive in his native Leiden. During these years he painted mostly on large
canvases, depicting subjects drawn from the bible and mythology such as
in the Louvre painting, or from farcical literature and popular culture. TheFig 2. Gerrit Dou, A Painter with a
Pipe and a Book, ca. 1645–50, oil
on panel, 48 x 37 cm,Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SKA-86

small scale and panel support of Public Notary are quite exceptional, andthis work seems to be the first instance in which Metsu responded to thework of Gerrit Dou (1613–75).
Metsu’s prime source of inspiration seems to have been Dou’sA Painterwith a Pipe and a Book , ca. 1645, where a man, holding an open book,similarly leans out of an open window and stares at the viewer (fig 2). In
each work, moreover, the artist has provided textual information on anobject illusionistically nailed to the architecture surrounding the window
opening: Dou inscribed his signature on a piece of paper nailed to thestone frame, while Metsu identified the man’s profession and date on thewooden board.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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The subject of a notary or lawyer appears occasionally in Dutch genre
paintings of the seventeenth century, but most of these works are
somewhat comical in character. Rooted in a tradition stretching back to
mid-sixteenth-century peasant scenes, they depict arrogant lawyers
cheating their gullible rural clients.[4] Other paintings, including a number ofworks by Adriaen van Ostade (1610–85) from the end of his career,
portray lawyers and notaries in a more dignified manner, often studying
documents alone in their offices.[5] Metsu also rendered his notary
respectably, but in a different manner, almost as though he were soliciting
business from the window of his office.
Whether or not Metsu portrayed an actual individual is not known;
however, he did have a personal relationship with a notary in the early
1650s. In January 1654 the young artist asked the notary Jan Jansz van
Griecken to relieve his guardians of responsibilities that had been given
them after his mother’s death in 1651.[6] The fact that Van Griecken’s
father, a renowned goldsmith in Leiden, owned one of the artist’s works
indicates that the notary’s family collected Metsu’s work. The painting inquestion, “a large picture by Metsu,” which was listed in the father’s
posthumous inventory, was in all likelihood also from the early years of
Metsu’s career, either one of his sizable history paintings, such asChrist
and the Woman Taken in Adultery (see (fig 1)), or a large genre scene,such as Woman Selling Game from a Stall (GM-114).[7] However, Public
Notary could not have been a portrait of Jan Jansz van Griecken, as thenotary was too young to be the individual represented in this painting.[8]-Adriaan Waiboer© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Public NotaryPage 5 of 8Endnotes
1. See Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Havenand London, 2012), 161, for a list of Metsu’s extant dated works.
2. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven andLondon, 2012), 168, under A-8. The auction catalogue of the Van Hoeken sale (seeProvenance) lists the date as 1665. In the copy of this catalogue, preserved at the Getty
Research Institute, Los Angeles, this year has been crossed out and substituted by 1651.
Neither of these dates, however, is likely when the style of the painting in relation to Metsu’s
chronology is taken into account.
3. For Metsu’s A Notary Sharpening his Pen, c. 1653, oil on panel, 40 x 32.5 cm., in the Kila
collection, Switzerland, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue
Raisonné (New Haven and London, 2012), 21, 168, no. A-9, ill. The same model is depictedin this work.
4. Peter C. Sutton, “Love Letters: Dutch Genre Painting in the Age of Vermeer,” in Love
Letters: Dutch Genre Paintings in the Age of Vermeer , ed. Peter C. Sutton (Exh. cat. Dublin,National Gallery of Ireland; Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences) (NewHaven, 2003), 23–24.
5. See, for instance, Love Letters: Dutch Genre Paintings in the Age of Vermeer , ed. Peter C.
Sutton (Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum ofArts and Sciences) (New Haven, 2003), 154–61, nos. 28–30, all ill.
6. Regional Archives Leiden, notarial archives A 892, record no. 27 (first published byAbraham Bredius, “Iets over de jeugd van Gabriel Metsu,” Oud-Holland 25 [1907]: 201).
See also Adriaan E. Waiboer, “The Early Years of Gabriel Metsu,” Burlington Magazine 147(2005): 90.
7. Regional Archives Leiden, notarial archives 762, no. 351. For more on the Van Grieckens
and their relationship with Metsu, see Pieter Roelofs, “Early Owners of Paintings by Metsu inLeiden and Amsterdam,” in Gabriel Metsu, ed. Adriaan E. Waiboer (Exh. cat. Dublin,
National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington D.C., National Gallery ofArt) (New Haven, 2010), 99.
8. Van Griecken was born after 1613; see Pieter Roelofs, “Early Owners 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 ofArt) (New Haven, 2010), 99.

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Provenance[Daniel Katz, The Hague, by 1940].
M. L. van Hoeken, Wassenaar (his sale, Paul Brandt, Amsterdam, 25 June 1959, no. 194[for 14,000 florins]).
[R. Lamm, Paris, by 1960].
Adelaide Stein Miller, New York (her sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 11 April 1991, no. 59, as byQuiringh Gerritsz van Brekelenkam [to Richard P. Boncza]).
Richard P. Boncza, Fair Lawn, New Jersey (sale, Tajan, Paris, 14 December 1998, no. 223,bought in; sale, Tajan, Paris, 9 December 1999, no. 40, bought in [Otto Naumann, 2004]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2004.

Exhibition History
Williamstown, The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, “An Inner World: SeventeenthCentury Dutch Genre Painting,” 5 March–17 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].

References
Gudlaugsson, Sturla J. “Kanttekeningen bij de ontwikkeling van Metsu.” Oud-Holland 83(1968): 13 n. 2, 19, no. 7, 24 n. 18.
Robinson, Franklin W. Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre
Painting of the Golden Age. New York, 1974, 31, 120, no. 37.
Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs etgraveurs de tous les temps et de tous les pays par un groupe d’écrivains spécialistesfrançais et étrangers. 10 vols. Paris, 1976. Revised edition by Jacques Busse, Paris, 1999,
9:537.
Wheelock Jr., Arthur K. “Review of Robinson 1974.” Art Bulletin 58 (1976): 457.
Wurfbain, Maarten L. “Vrouwenfiguren in schilderijen uit Gabriël Metsu’s Leidse jaren.”
Tableau 2, no. 1 (1979): 17, no. 10.
Naumann, Otto. Frans van Mieris (1635–1681) the Elder . 2 vols. Doornspijk, 1981, 1:42 n.
40; 58 n. 46.
MacLaren, Neil and Brown, Christopher. National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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1600–1900. 2 vols. London, 1991, 1:257.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “The Early Years of Gabriel Metsu.” Burlington Magazine 147 (2005):
89 n. 56, 90, no. 16.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): Life and Work.” 4 vols. Ph.D. diss. New
York University, 2007, 1:104–5, 405–6, no. A-16; 4:1065.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Havenand London, 2012, 20, 168, no. A-8.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained and vertically oriented rectangular oak, hasbevels along all four edges.[1] The panel is unthinned and uncradled, and has machine toolmarks
and one paper label but no wax collection seals, import stamps, stencils or panel maker’s marks.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. A gently curved arch incised into theground along the upper right quadrant may indicate that the upper arch of the window wasoriginally intended to be farther to the right. Additional diagonally oriented incised lines along thestonework are oriented parallel to the lower book edge. The ground appears to be followed by abrown to brown-black sketch.[2]The paint has been applied in successive thin layers with transparent glazing, light over dark. In
raking light the outer contours and highlights of the figure’s proper right sleeve, the contour of thebrown triangular corner of fabric along his chest, and the edge of the book are slightly raised withlow visible brushmarking. Fine traction cracks in thin dark areas, such as the shadows below thebook and hand, may be due to the sketch.[3]No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at
780–1000 nanometers or in the X-radiograph.
The painting is unsigned but inscribed and dated in light-colored paint on a sign depicted in thelower left corner. The final digit of the date is ambiguous.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2004 and remains in a good state of preservation
despite areas of thinness along the stonework.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of the wood is based on visual examination only.
2. According to 2009 examination notes by E. Melanie Gifford from the National Gallery ofArt, Washington.

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3. According to 2009 examination notes by E. Melanie Gifford from the National Gallery ofArt, Washington.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection