Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathingca. 1654–56

Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)oil on panel
51.7 x 63.8 cm
signed in dark paint, lower center, on
gunstock: “GMetsù.” (GM in ligature)
GM-106
Currently on view at: Long Museum, Shanghai

How To Cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. "Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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In one of the most remarkable and unexpected paintings in Dutch art,

Comparative Figures

Gabriel Metsu has here portrayed himself as a seated nude bather putting
on his shirt after a dip in the water. Not at all modest, he smiles at theviewer like an actor addressing his audience. Lying on the ground near
him are his rifle and powder horn, while the dead hare hanging from a tree
branch suggests that he has taken his swim to cool off after his successful
hunt. Standing patiently by his side is his faithful dog. Other, smaller
figures are seen in the background, including a nude bather and a couple
walking along a road near the bridge spanning the water where a man
stands observing the scene.
Given the watery terrain of the Netherlands, remarkably few works actually
depict people enjoying a swim. Bathers are sometimes seen in landscapepaintings by, among others, Philips Wouwerman (1619–68), Paulus Potter

Fig 1. Gerrit Dou. Male Nude, ca.
1660–65, oil on panel, 25 x 19
cm, The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg, 893(1625–54), and Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–82), but they are generally
small-scale figures and not individualized as in this case.[1] In fact,swimming does not seem to have been a common pastime for the Dutch.
Water in urban areas was often polluted, and even in the countrysidepeople rarely plunged into rivers and lakes. People even abstained fromtaking baths (except for medical reasons) out of fear that germs could
enter the body once submersed in the water.[2]The only artist, other than Metsu, to depict a single large-scale malebather was Gerrit Dou (1613–75) in a painting now in the State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg (fig 1). The thematic similarities with Metsu’s
painting prompted one scholar to argue that Dou’s composition served as
Metsu’s model.[3] Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing , however,predates Dou’s painting by some 10 years. Moreover, Dou’s classicizing

Fig 2. Gabriel Metsu, Self-Portrait
as a Painter, 1655–58, oil on
panel, 38 x 31.4 cm, Royal
Collection, Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II, 901, Royal Collection
Trust / © Her Majesty Queen
Elizabeth II 2014

image of a soldier pointing into the distance is remarkably different fromthe smiling hunter in Metsu’s work. Unlike Dou, Metsu made no effort tohide corporal imperfections or irregularities and gave his hunter a distinctly
portrait-like character.
The identification of the hunter as Metsu is based on a comparison of his
facial features with Self-Portrait as a Painter (fig 2).[4] Although Dutch
genre paintings are filled with self-portraits and depictions of artists’ family
members, Metsu’s rendering of himself nude is unique. The question of
why Metsu portrayed himself in this extremely unconventional manner isdifficult to answer, but it may be related to the guise he assumed here as a

Fig 3. Gabriel Metsu, A Hunter
Showing His Prey, 1654–56, oil© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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hunter. In the seventeenth century, hunting for all but the smallest gamewas restricted to the court, the nobility, and officers of the state.[5] The
young Metsu, who did not occupy an elevated position in society, would

on panel, 50 x 38.8 cm,
Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg,
378, bpk, Berlin / Hamburger
Kunsthalle / Elke Walford / Art
Resource, NY

never have been allowed to participate in this sport, but, as is suggested inthis painting, he may have been permitted to shoot hares.[6] Despite theprominent status of hunting, however, Dutch artists often depicted hunters
as lusty figures who were as interested in chasing women as game. The
phallic shape of their long-barreled rifles often served as a visual pun totheir virility. Metsu may have been playing on this association by theprominent placement of his rifle, and by signing his painting on the rifle’s
stock.
Artists also played on verbal puns to suggest a hunter’s lustful desires.
The Dutch verb vogelen (literally “to bird”) was used commonly to refer tocopulating, and painters, including Metsu, often depicted hunters courting
women by offering them birds.[7] Likewise, the expression “hunting hares”

Fig 4. Gabriel Metsu, A Cavalier
Visiting a Blacksmith Shop,
1654–56, oil on canvas, 65.4 x
73.3 cm, Salting Bequest, 1910,
The National Gallery, London, NG
2591, © National Gallery, London/ Art Resource, NY

was a metaphor for intercourse.[8] Although hares appear less frequently
than birds in depictions of hunters, Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris(1635–81) repeatedly included them in suggestive images of poultry andgame shops to underscore a woman’s sexuality.[9]Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing was probably meant to evoke alascivious sportsman, with his nude muscular body and suggestive smile
further accentuating his self-assured masculinity. Highlighting a hunter’s
libido also seems to have been the central theme in another image of asportsman that Metsu painted around the same time as Hunter Getting
Dressed after Bathing. This genre-like portrait represents a sportsman andhis partridge dog enjoying a break in the woods (fig 3). Having put down
his powder horn and rifle, the hunter proudly holds up a bird he has justshot, a gesture indicating his virility.[10] Several years later, around 1660,
the Leiden artist Arie de Vois (1630/35–80) drew inspiration from Metsu by
painting his self-portrait as a hunter in the same pose as that inHunter
Showing His Prey.[11] De Vois placed the long-barreled rifle next to thehunter’s hip, a rather explicit reference to the rifle’s phallic symbolic
association.
It is tempting to think that Metsu intended this painting as a personal joke,
but the picture probably found a prominent buyer during the artist’s lifetimeor soon after his death. The English merchant Thomas Mayden, who lived© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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on the Fluwelen Burgwal in Amsterdam, owned at his death in 1692, “eenswemmer van [Metzu]” (a swimmer by Metzu), which was almost certainly
Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing .[12] In addition to “een swemmer,”
Mayden owned another painting by Metsu described as “een smit” (asmith). This painting may have been A Cavalier Visiting a Blacksmith’s
Shop (fig 4), which Metsu had completed not long after his painting of thenude hunter. Interestingly, the painting of the blacksmith’s shop depicts
the artist in the role of a pompous officer who has ordered an old, feeblesmith to make him some horseshoes. Perhaps the two paintings inwhich the artist featured himself in an unusual and somewhat humorous
manner entered Mayden’s collection together.
The early eighteenth-century provenance of Hunter Getting Dressed after
Bathing is unknown, but the picture reappeared in the collection of Lucas
Merens (1698–1776), a captain of the Dutch East India Company andmayor of the city of Hoorn. The Amsterdam art dealer Jan Spaan acquired
Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing at Merens’s posthumous sale in
1778. He probably passed it on immediately to a foreign dealer, as no lessthan two years later the painting featured in a collection catalogue of the
Swiss politician and writer François Tronchin.[14] Tronchin, who assembled
a large collection of Dutch paintings with the help of the French painter
Jean-Étienne Liotard (1702–89), was the author of his own collection
catalogue. He deserves credit for being the first to recognize Metsu’s selfportrait in the nude hunter.[15] The painting passed through six generationsof the Tronchin family until it was sold with the estate in the early twentiethcentury.
Descriptions of Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing in auction
catalogues and art historical literature have always focused on its
idiosyncratic subject matter. Tronchin’s catalogue is one of the few
sources commenting on its distinctive brushwork, describing it as “large &moëlleuse” (broad and supple).[16] Indeed, one of the key characteristics ofMetsu’s painting is the fluid technique, as seen in the hunter’s body, thearchitecture, and much of the vegetation. Even more loosely painted are
the landscape, the bridge, and the clouds in the background. Metsu,
however, strongly varied his brushwork throughout the painting, andrendered the foreground still-life elements, such as the fur of the dead hare
and the ironwork on the rifle, with great refinement. He used suchdifferences in handling to create depth and to focus the viewer’s attention.
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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The same variation in brushwork can be found in other works from themid-1650s, including A Cavalier Visiting a Blacksmith Shop .[17] Metsu
allowed the brownish ground to show through in both works and let it serve
as a base tone for the landscape and the architecture. Likewise, he left thecomposition’s preparatory sketch visible in some areas, including thevegetation in the bottom left. He worked up only the foreground in greater
detail, particularly the hunter, his clothes, and his dog. Another techniquecharacteristic of this period of Metsu’s career is the manner in which hecontoured forms in black to suggest shadows and to make objects standout against their respective backgrounds.
Finally, it is worth noting that Metsu placed more emphasis on thelandscape in Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing than he did in most of
his other paintings. Aside from A Hunter Showing His Prey , only two otherworks, both dating to the early years of his career, have such a prominent
landscape. These works represent Old Testament stories and are set in
Italianate landscapes that call to mind works by Utrecht painters.[18] Even
though Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing depicts a Dutch landscapesimilar to what the artist could have seen near Leiden, the setting isprobably not based on reality but rather is a creation of Metsu’s
imagination.
-Adriaan Waiboer© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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Endnotes
1. See Alan Chong’s discussion of the phenomenon of nude bathers in Dutch art in Peter C.
Sutton et al., Masters of 17th-Century Dutch Landscape Painting (Exh. cat. Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts; Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art)
(Boston, 1987), 389.
2. Bianca M. du Mortier, “Costumes in Gabriel Metsu’s Paintings: Mode and Manners in the
Mid-Seventeenth Century,” 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), 143–45.
3. Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre
Painting of the Golden Age (New York, 1974), 29.
4. Comparisons can also be made with a number of other works in which Metsu assumed theguise of a high-class suitor courting an elegant lady, who can be identified as his wife,
Isabella de Wolff. See, for instance, Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A
Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven and London, 2012), 254–55, no. A-115; 268, no. A-128,
both ill.
5. Scott A. Sullivan, The Dutch Gamepiece (Montclair, N.J., 1984), 236.
6. Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre
Painting of the Golden Age (New York, 1974), 29.
7. Eddy de Jongh, “Erotica in vogelperspectief: De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks 17de
eeuwse genre-voorstellingen,” Simiolus 3 (1968–69): 22–43. Cesare Ripa (translated by
Dirck P. Pers), Iconologia, of uytbeeldingen des verstands […] , trans. Dirck P. Pers
(Amsterdam, 1644), 144, even mentioned that partridges were particularly wild duringmating and therefore highly suitable for artists to symbolize unbridled lust. For Metsu’s
paintings, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné(New Haven and London, 2012), 207–8, no. A-64; 217, no. A-74; 265–66, no. A-125, all ill.
8. “Jager: Ick jaegh de Haes op barre Heyden . . . Vryer: En ick seer gaern in donckere nollen”(Hunter: I hunt the hare on barren heath . . . Lover: And I like to do so very much in darkholes). Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, 23 vols. (The Hague and Leiden,
1882–1987), 7:5253. Roemer Visscher, Brabbelingh (Amsterdam, ca. 1600), 91.
9. Eric Jan Sluijter, ed., Leidse Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge,
1630–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 161–62.
10. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven andLondon, 2012), 32.
11. Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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Painting of the Golden Age (New York, 1974), 30; Eric Jan Sluijter inLeidse Fijnschilders:
Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 , ed. Eric Jan Sluijter (Exh. cat.
Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), 255–57, no. 91, ill.
12. Amsterdam City Archives, Desolate Boedelkamer 396, fol. 40v (Getty Provenance Index,
Inventory Contents, PI inv. no. N-323). Sebastiaan A. C. Dudok van Heel,Van Amsterdamse
burgers tot Europese aristocraten: Hun geschiedenis en hun portretten; De Heijnenmaagschap 1400–1800 (The Hague, 2008), 718–19.
13. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven andLondon, 2012), 29–31.
14. François Tronchin, Catalogue des tableaux de mon Cabinet (Geneva, 1780), 34.
15. François Tronchin, Catalogue des tableaux de mon Cabinet (Geneva, 1780), 34: “Metzu
sortant du bain au retour de la chasse.”
16. “la touche en est large & moëlleuse; de même que de tous les accessoires dont Metzu a faitle tableau le plus imposant par sa couleur vigoureuse, & son merveilleux effet.” François
Tronchin, Catalogue des tableaux de mon Cabinet (Geneva, 1780), 34.
17. For a detailed analysis of the painting techniques employed by Metsu inA Cavalier Visiting aBlacksmith Shop, see Melanie E. Gifford, “Fine Painting and 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 ofArt) (New Haven, 2010), 161–63.
18. Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre
Painting of the Golden Age (New York, 1974), 19; Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life
and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven and London, 2012), 157, no. A-6 (Lot andHis Daughters); 169, no. A-10 (The Dismissal of Hagar), both ill. The Dismissal of
Hagar constitutes Metsu’s direct response to Jan Baptist Weenix’s views of the Italian
campagna.

Provenance
Probably Thomas Mayden, Amsterdam, by 1662 (his inventory, 29 October 1662).
Lucas Merens, Hoorn (his sale, Ploos van Amstel, Hendrik de Winter, and Jan Yver,
Amsterdam, 15 April 1778, no. 60 [to Jan Spaan for 52 guilders; Lebrun, Paris, by 1780]).
François Tronchin des Délices, Bessinge, by 1780, for 4,000 “livres” (his sale, Constantin
and Boileau, 23–24 March 1801, no. 110); by descent to Jean-Louis Robert Tronchin,
Bessinge; by descent to Armand Henri Tronchin, Bessinge; by descent to Louis-Rémy© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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Nosky Tronchin, Bessinge; by descent to Henry Tronchin, Bessinge; by descent to Robert
Tronchin, Bessinge, 1928.
Xavier Givaudan, Bessinge (who purchased the paintings collection with the domain), by
1938; by descent to André Givaudan, Bessinge, by 1974.
(Sale, Lord Chetwode et. al., anonymous part, Christie’s, London, 12 December 1980, no.
110; anonymous sale, Koller, Zürich, 15–16 May, 1981, no. 5088).
Jean Charles Lignel (his sale, Jean Claude Anaf, Lyon, 20 October 1991, no. 59).
Private collection, United States [Otto Naumann Ltd, New York, 2007].
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Exhibition History
Geneva, Musée Rath, “Anciens maitres exposés au Musée Rath,” July 1850, no. 29 [lent by
the Tronchin family].
Geneva, Musée Rath, “De Genève à l’Ermitage: Les collections de François Tronchin,” 21June–15 September 1974, no. 151 [lent by André Givaudan, Bessinge].
Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, “Gabriel Metsu,” 4 September–5 December 2010;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 16 December 2010–21 March 2011; Washington, National
Gallery of Art, 17 April–24 July 2011, no. 35 [lent by the present owner].
Rotterdam, Kunsthal Rotterdam, “Sweet and Salt: Water and the Dutch,” 14 February–10
June 2012 [lent by the present owner].
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, “An Eye for Detail: Dutch Painting
from the Leiden Collection,” 20 September 2014–21 June 2015 [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 [lentby the present owner].

References
Tronchin, François. Catalogue des tableaux de mon Cabinet. Geneva, 1780, 34.
Tronchin, François. Catalogue raisonné du Cabinet de tableaux de feu Monsieur François© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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Tronchin des Délices, ancient Conseiller d’Etat de la République de Genève: Fait par luimême. Geneva, 1798, 69.
Blanc, Charles. Histoire des Peintres de toutes les écoles: École hollandaise . 2 vols. Paris,
1861, 1:12.
Rigaud, Jean-Jacques. Renseignements sur les Beaux-Arts à Genève. Geneva, 1876, 336.
Tronchin, Henry. Le conseiller François Tronchin et ses amis . Paris, 1895, 251–52, 255 n.
4.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent
Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work by John Smith . 8 vols.
London, 1907–27, 1:326–27, no. 221. Translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches
Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts .
10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Crosnier, Jules. “Bessinge.” Nos anciens et leurs oeuvres: Receuil genevois d’art 8 (1908):
84–86.
Fatio, Guillaume. Genève et les Pays-Bas. Geneva, 1928, 124.
Robinson, Franklin W. Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre
Painting of the Golden Age. New York, 1974, 29–30, 78–79, 117, fig. 33.
Roethlisberger, Marcel. “The Tronchin Collection at Geneva [Review].” Burlington
Magazine 66 (1974): 552, 554.
Ingamells, John. The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Pictures: IV, Dutch and Flemish.
London, 1992, 207 n. 7.
Kleinmann, Ute. “Rahmen und Gerahmtes: Das Spiel mit Darstellung und Bedeutung, Eine
Untersuchung des illusionistischen Rahmenmotivs im Oeuvre Gerrit Dous.” Ph.D. diss.
University of Bochum, 1992 / Frankfurt am Main, 1996, 151 n. 537.
Fredericksen, Burton B. and Peronnet, Benjamin et al., eds.Répertoire des tableaux vendus
en France au XIXe siècle. 1 vol. to date. Los Angeles, 1998, 1:683.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667), Life and Work.” Ph.D. diss. New York
University, 2007, 1:140, 144, 146, 549–51, no. A-65, 4:1114.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu’s Life, Work, and Reputation.” In Gabriel Metsu, edited
by Adriaan E. Waiboer. Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art. New Haven, 2010, 6.
Roelofs, Pieter. “Early Owners of Paintings by Metsu in Leiden and Amsterdam.” InGabriel
Metsu.

Edited by Adriaan E. Waiboer. Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland;

Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art. New Haven, 2010,
112, 117, no. 82.
Du Mortier, Bianca. “Costumes in Gabriel Metsu’s Paintings: Mode and Manners in the MidSeventeenth Century.” In Gabriel Metsu. Edited by Adriaan E. Waiboer. Exh. cat. Dublin,© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington D.C., National Gallery ofArt. New Haven, 2010, 143–44, 142, no. 102.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné.

New Havenand London, 2012, 30, 174, no. A-18.

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of horizontal, wavy-grained, rectangular, non-Baltic oak, has bevels
on all four sides.[1] The wavy grain is visually pronounced through the sky. There are twocoatings along the uncradled panel reverse: a textured brown radio-opaque layer followed by awhite wax layer. The brown layer has been applied with 2 cm-wide horizontal and diagonal
brushwork. A black stencil and a paper label have been applied over the brown lead layer. The
white wax layer extends over the stencil and label. No machine toolmarks, import stamps or
panel maker’s mark are visible through the coatings.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. There is a narrow raised vertical lineof ground 0.5 cm into the face of the painting, along the upper right corner. The paint has been
applied smoothly in thin layers with low brushmarking and transparent glazing, light over dark.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers.
Although the brushwork of the brown layer applied to the panel reverse makes the X-radiographdifficult to read, there is no indication of the foliage above the diagonal roofline in the upper left
corner and the small figure and bridge handrails in the background, which are visible in theinfrared images.
The painting is signed in dark paint along the brown wooden gunstock along the lower center ofthe composition but is undated.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2007 and remains in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The characterization of wood is by Ian Tyers, independent consultant, Arcus
Dendrochronology, Sheffield, England, who kindly examined the X-radiograph and offered
his expert opinion via email.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection