Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)ca. 1654–56
oil on panel
51.7 x 63.8 cm
signed in dark paint, lower center, on
gunstock: “GMetsù.” (GM in ligature)
GM-106© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. “Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing” (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.

In one of the most remarkable and unexpected paintings in Dutch art, Gabriel Metsu

Comparative Figures

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 the viewer like an actor addressing his
audience. Lying on the ground near him are his rifle and powder horn, while the deadhare 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 thescene.
Given the watery terrain of the Netherlands, remarkably few works actually depict
people enjoying a swim. Bathers are sometimes seen in landscape paintings by,among others, Philips Wouwerman (1619–68), Paulus Potter (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

Fig 1. Gerrit Dou. Male Nude, ca.
1660–65, oil on panel, 25 x 19 cm,
The State Hermitage Museum,
St. Petersburg, 893

common pastime for the Dutch. Water in urban areas was often polluted, and even in
the countryside people rarely plunged into rivers and lakes. People even abstained
from taking 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 male bather was Gerrit
Dou (1613–75) in a painting now in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (fig1). The thematic similarities with Metsu’s painting prompted one scholar to argue thatDou’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© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
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image of a soldier pointing into the distance is remarkably different from the smilinghunter in Metsu’s work. Unlike Dou, Metsu made no effort to hide corporalimperfections or irregularities and gave his hunter a distinctly portrait-like character.

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

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 arefilled with self-portraits and depictions of artists’ family members, Metsu’s renderingof himself nude is unique. The question of why Metsu portrayed himself in thisextremely unconventional manner is difficult to answer, but it may be related to theguise he assumed here as a hunter. In the seventeenth century, hunting for all but thesmallest game was 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 never havebeen allowed to participate in this sport, but, as is suggested in this painting, he may
have been permitted to shoot hares.[6] Despite the prominent 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 to their virility. Metsu may have been playing on thisassociation by the prominent placement of his rifle, and by signing his painting on the

Fig 3. Gabriel Metsu, A Hunter
Showing His Prey, 1654–56, oil on
panel, 50 x 38.8 cm, Hamburger
Kunsthalle, Hamburg, 378, bpk, Berlin/ Hamburger Kunsthalle / Elke
Walford / Art Resource, NY

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 to copulating, and painters,
including Metsu, often depicted hunters courting women by offering them birds.[7]Likewise, the expression “hunting hares” was a metaphor for intercourse.[8] Althoughhares 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 a lascivious
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

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

central theme in another image of a sportsman that Metsu painted around the sametime as Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing. This genre-like portrait represents a
sportsman and his 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 just shot, agesture 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 in Hunter Showing His Prey.[11] De Vois placed thelong-barreled rifle next to the hunter’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© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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picture probably found a prominent buyer during the artist’s lifetime or soon after his
death. The English merchant Thomas Mayden, who lived on the Fluwelen Burgwal in
Amsterdam, owned at his death in 1692, “een swemmer 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” (a smith). This painting may have been A Cavalier Visiting a Blacksmith’s
Shop (fig 4), which Metsu had completed not long after his painting of the nude
hunter. Interestingly, the painting of the blacksmith’s shop depicts the artist in the roleof a pompous officer who has ordered an old, feeble smith to make him somehorseshoes. Perhaps the two paintings in which 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 and mayor 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 foreigndealer, as no less than two years later the painting featured in a collection catalogue ofthe 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 forbeing the first to recognize Metsu’s self-portrait in the nude hunter.[15] The painting
passed through six generations of the Tronchin family until it was sold with the estatein the early twentieth century.
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 of Metsu’s painting is the fluid technique, as seen in thehunter’s body, the architecture, 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, and rendered theforeground still-life elements, such as the fur of the dead hare and the ironwork on
the rifle, with great refinement. He used such differences in handling to create depth
and to focus the viewer’s attention.
The same variation in brushwork can be found in other works from the mid-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 landscapeand the architecture. Likewise, he left the composition’s preparatory sketch visible in© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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some areas, including the vegetation in the bottom left. He worked up only theforeground in greater detail, particularly the hunter, his clothes, and his dog. Anothertechnique characteristic of this period of Metsu’s career is the manner in which hecontoured forms in black to suggest shadows and to make objects stand out against
their respective backgrounds.
Finally, it is worth noting that Metsu placed more emphasis on the landscape in
Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing than he did in most of his other paintings. Asidefrom A Hunter Showing His Prey, only two other works, both dating to the early yearsof his career, have such a prominent landscape. These works represent Old Testamentstories 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
landscape similar 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

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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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 MidSeventeenth Century,” 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),
143–45.
3. Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of theGolden Age (New York, 1974), 29.
4. Comparisons can also be made with a number of other works in which Metsu assumed the guise of ahigh-class suitor courting an elegant lady, who can be identified as his wife, Isabella de Wolff. See, forinstance, Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven andLondon, 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 theGolden Age (New York, 1974), 29.
7. Eddy de Jongh, “Erotica in vogelperspectief: De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks 17de eeuwse genrevoorstellingen,” Simiolus 3 (1968–69): 22–43. Cesare Ripa (translated by Dirck P. Pers), Iconologia, ofuytbeeldingen des verstands […], trans. Dirck P. Pers (Amsterdam, 1644), 144, even mentioned thatpartridges were particularly wild during mating 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 dark holes). 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 and London,2012), 32.
11. Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of theGolden Age (New York, 1974), 30; Eric Jan Sluijter in Leidse Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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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 Europesearistocraten: Hun geschiedenis en hun portretten; De Heijnen-maagschap 1400–1800 (The Hague, 2008),
718–19.
13. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven and London,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 fait le tableau leplus imposant par sa couleur vigoureuse, & son merveilleux effet.” François Tronchin, Catalogue destableaux de mon Cabinet (Geneva, 1780), 34.
17. For a detailed analysis of the painting techniques employed by Metsu in A Cavalier Visiting a Blacksmith
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 of Art) (New Haven, 2010), 161–63.
18. Franklin W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of theGolden 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 and His Daughters); 169, no. A-10 (TheDismissal 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 toArmand Henri Tronchin, Bessinge; by descent to Louis-Rémy Nosky Tronchin, Bessinge; by descent toHenry Tronchin, Bessinge; by descent to Robert Tronchin, Bessinge, 1928.
Xavier Givaudan, Bessinge (who purchased the paintings collection with the domain), by 1938; bydescent to André Givaudan, Bessinge, by 1974.
© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing
Page 8 of 11(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 Tronchinfamily].
Geneva, Musée Rath, “De Genève à l’Ermitage: Les collections de François Tronchin,” 21 June–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 theLeiden 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 [lent by the present
owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present owner].
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 the present owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May 2019 [lent by the present
owner].

References© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Tronchin, François. Catalogue des tableaux de mon Cabinet. Geneva, 1780, 34.
Tronchin, François. Catalogue raisonné du Cabinet de tableaux de feu Monsieur François Tronchin desDélices, ancient Conseiller d’Etat de la République de Genève. Fait par lui-même. 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 of John Smith. Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke,
1:326–27, no. 221. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches
Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen 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 theGolden 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.” PhD diss. University of
Bochum, 1992 / Frankfurt am Main, 1996, 151 n. 537.
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Benjamin Peronnet et al., eds. Répertoire des tableaux vendus en France au
XIXe siècle. Los Angeles, 1998, 683.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667), Life and Work.” vols. PhD 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 byAdriaan E. Waiboer, 6. Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum;Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art. New Haven, 2010.
Roelofs, Pieter. “Early Owners of Paintings by Metsu in Leiden and Amsterdam.” In Gabriel Metsu.
Edited by Adriaan E. Waiboer, 112, 117, no. 82. Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland;
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington, D.C. National Gallery of Art. New Haven, 2010.
Du Mortier, Bianca. “Costumes in Gabriel Metsu’s Paintings: Mode and Manners in the MidSeventeenth Century.” In Gabriel Metsu. Edited by Adriaan E. Waiboer, 143–44, 142, no. 102. Exh. cat.
Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington, D. C., National Gallery ofArt. New Haven, 2010.
© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel

Metsu,

Life

and

Work:

A

Catalogue

Raisonné.

New

Haven

2012, 30, 174, no. A-18.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Rembrandt and His Time: China and the Dutch Republic in the Golden Age.” In
Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt,
10; 15, no. 51. Translated by Li Ying. Exh. cat. Beijing, National Museum of China. Beijing, 2017
McCarthy, Alexa. “Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces
from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 122–23; 184, no. 51. 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 fromThe Leiden Collection. Exh. cat. Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund. Shanghai, 2017, 154–55.
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.
McCarthy, Alexa. “Hunter Getting Dressed after Bathing.” In The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 120–21; 236, no. 27. 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. “The Leiden Collection and the Dutch Golden Age.” In Rembrandt, Vermeer andthe Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée 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 and Arabic.]
Ducos, Blaise, and Lara Yeager-Crasselt, eds. Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre. Exh. cat. Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu
Dhabi. London, 2019, 178–79, no. 92. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]

Technical Summary
The support, a single plank of horizontal, wavy-grained, rectangular, non-Baltic oak, has bevels on all foursides.[1] The wavy grain is visually pronounced through the sky. There are two coatings along the uncradledpanel reverse: a textured brown radio-opaque layer followed by a white 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 line of ground
0.5 cm into the face of the painting, along the upper right corner. The paint has been applied smoothly in thin
© 2024 The Leiden Collection

and

Lon

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layers with low brushmarking and transparent glazing, light over dark.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. Although thebrushwork of the brown layer applied to the panel reverse makes the X-radiograph difficult to read, there isno indication of the foliage above the diagonal roofline in the upper left corner and the small figure andbridge handrails in the background, which are visible in the infrared images.
The painting is signed in dark paint along the brown wooden gunstock along the lower center of thecomposition 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.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection