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Public Notary
Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)ca. 165(3?)
oil on panel
41 x 32.5 cm
inscribed and dated in light-colored paint on sign,
lower left: “openbaer Notarus / 165[3?]”GM-101

How to cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. “Public Notary” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23. https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

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An old man with a full gray beard and wearing a red cloak stares directly at theComparative Figures

viewer as he leans out of an arched window set into a brownish-gray stone building.
His large, boney hands hold open a folio containing a number of loose sheets ofpaper, as well as an official document with attached wax seals. On the wooden sign
hanging below the open shutter is an inscription that reads openbaer Notarus (publicnotary). The sign also bears 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 that Metsu executed this workin the same year.[2] The Louvre painting is a large biblical scene on canvas, rather thanFig 1. Gabriel Metsu, Christ and theWoman Taken in Adultery, 1653, oilon canvas, 134 x 165 cm, Musée duLouvre, Paris, inv. 1459, Photo: JeanGilles Beirizzi, © RMN-Grand Palais /Art Resource, NYa single-figure painting on panel, but it has a comparable palette consisting ofbrownish-gray colors combined with distinct areas of red and white. Moreover, thefacial type and posture of the notary with his raised shoulders is identical to that of
the central Pharisee. Finally, the two paintings include finely executed large folios,
documents and seals similar to those that appear in other of Metsu’s works fromaround 1653–54, including another depiction of the same notary and Woman Readinga Book by a Window (GM-105).[3]Public Notary dates from the early period of Metsu’s career when he was active 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 fromfarcical literature and popular culture. The small scale and panel support of Public
Notary are quite exceptional, and this work seems to be the first instance in which
Metsu responded to the work of Gerrit Dou (1613–75).

Fig 2. Gerrit Dou, A Painter with aPipe and a Book, ca. 1645–50, oil on
panel, 48 x 37 cm, Rijksmuseum,Amsterdam, SK-A-86

Metsu’s prime source of inspiration seems to have been Dou’s A Painter with a Pipeand a Book, ca. 1645, where a man, holding an open book, similarly leans out of anopen window and stares at the viewer (fig 2). In each work, moreover, the artist has
provided textual information on an object illusionistically nailed to the architecture
surrounding the window opening: Dou inscribed his signature on a piece of paper
nailed to the stone frame, while Metsu identified the man’s profession and date on thewooden board.
The subject of a notary or lawyer appears occasionally in Dutch genre paintings of theseventeenth century, but most of these works are somewhat comical in character.
Rooted in a tradition stretching back to mid-sixteenth-century peasant scenes, theydepict arrogant lawyers cheating their gullible rural clients.[4] Other paintings,including a number of works by Adriaen van Ostade (1610–85) from the end of hiscareer, portray lawyers and notaries in a more dignified manner, often studying© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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documents alone in their offices.[5] Metsu also rendered his notary respectably, but ina 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 didhave a personal relationship with a notary in the early 1650s. In January 1654 theyoung artist asked the notary Jan Jansz van Griecken to relieve his guardians ofresponsibilities that had been given them after his mother’s death in 1651.[6] The factthat Van Griecken’s father, a renowned goldsmith in Leiden, owned one of the artist’sworks 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 oneof his sizable history paintings, such as Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (see(fig 1)), or a large genre scene, such as Woman Selling Game from aStall (GM-114).[7] However, Public Notary could not have been a portrait of Jan Jansz
van Griecken, as the notary was too young to be the individual represented in thispainting.[8]- Adriaan Waiboer, 2017

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Public NotaryPage 5 of 8Endnotes
1. See Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 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, 2012), 168,
under A-8. The auction catalogue of the Van Hoeken sale (see Provenance) lists the date as 1665. In thecopy 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 (NewHaven, 2012), 21, 168, no. A-9, ill. The same model is depicted in 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 ofIreland; Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences) (New Haven, 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 of Arts and Sciences) (NewHaven, 2003), 154–61, nos. 28–30, all ill.
6. Regional Archives Leiden, notarial archives A 892, record no. 27 (first published by Abraham 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 theirrelationship with Metsu, see Pieter Roelofs, “Early Owners of Paintings by Metsu in Leiden andAmsterdam,” 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), 99.
8. Van Griecken was born after 1613; see Pieter Roelofs, “Early Owners of Paintings by Metsu in Leidenand Amsterdam,” in Gabriel Metsu, ed. Adriaan E. Waiboer (Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery ofIreland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) (New Haven, 2010), 99.

Provenance[Daniel Katz, The Hague, by 1940].
M. L. van Hoeken, Wassenaar (his sale, Paul Brandt, Amsterdam, 25 June 1959, no. 194 [for 14,000florins]).
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[R. Lamm, Paris, by 1960].
Adelaide Stein Miller, New York (her sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 11 April 1991, no. 59, as by Quiringh
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: Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Genre Painting,” 5 March–17 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, “An Inner World: Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Genre Painting,” 17 April–25 July 2021, no. 3 [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 theGolden Age. New York, 1974, 31, 120, no. 37.
Bénézit, Emmanuel. Dictionnaire critique et documentaire des peintres, sculpteurs, dessinateurs et graveursde tous les temps et de tous les pays par un groupe d’écrivains spécialistes français et étrangers. 14 vols.
Paris, 1976. Revised edition by Jacques Busse. 14 vols. Paris, 1999, 9:537.
Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. “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 (Oct./Nov. 1979): 17, fig. 10.
Naumann, Otto. Frans van Mieris (1635–1681) the Elder. 2 vols. Doornspijk, 1981, 1: 42 n. 40; 58 n. 46.
MacLaren, Neil and Christopher Brown. National Gallery Catalogues: The Dutch School, 1600–1900. 2vols. 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. PhD diss. New York
University, 2007, 1:104–5, 405–6, no. A-16; 4:1065.
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Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, 2012, 20, 168,
no. A-8.
Van der Marck, E.M. and M. Eisma, eds. De notaris in woord en beeld: De cultuurhistorische collectie vande stichting tot bevordering van der notariële wetenschap. Zwolle, 2013, 195–86, fig. 5.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In The Age of Rembrandt
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.
Moqtaderi, Heather. “Introduction: Pulling Back the Curtain.” In An Inner World: Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Genre Painting. Edited by Heather Moqtaderi and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 16, no. 3. Exh. cat.
Philadelphia, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 2021.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Embracing an Inner World in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting.” InAn Inner World: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting. Edited by Heather Moqtaderi and Lara
Yeager-Crasselt, 25–27, no. 3. Exh. cat. Philadelphia, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, 2021.
Brisman, Shira. “Private Life and Public Record in Two Paintings by Gabriel Metsu.” In An Inner
World: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting. Edited by Heather Moqtaderi and Lara YeagerCrasselt, 35–43, no. 3. Exh. cat. Philadelphia, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania.
Philadelphia, 2021.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of vertically grained and vertically oriented rectangular oak, has bevels along all
four edges.[1] The panel is unthinned and uncradled, and has machine toolmarks and one paper label but nowax 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 the groundalong the upper right quadrant may indicate that the upper arch of the window was originally intended to befarther to the right. Additional diagonally oriented incised lines along the stonework are oriented parallel tothe lower book edge. The ground appears to be followed by a brown to brown-black sketch.[2]The paint has been applied in successive thin layers with transparent glazing, light over dark. In raking lightthe outer contours and highlights of the figure’s proper right sleeve, the contour of the brown triangularcorner of fabric along his chest, and the edge of the book are slightly raised with low visible brushmarking.
Fine traction cracks in thin dark areas, such as the shadows below the book and hand, may be due to thesketch.[3]No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000
nanometers or in the X-radiograph.
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The painting is unsigned but inscribed and dated in light-colored paint on a sign depicted in the lower 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 ofthinness 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 of Art,
Washington.
3. According to 2009 examination notes by E. Melanie Gifford from the National Gallery of Art,
Washington.

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