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Woman Selling Game from a Stall
Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)ca. 1653–54
oil on canvas
161.3 x 130 cm
signed in dark paint on side of wooden barrel,
lower right: “Gmet∫u” (“Gm” in ligature)
GM-114

How to cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. “Woman Selling Game from a Stall” (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.

The interactions of food sellers and their clients was a theme that greatly appealed toComparative Figures

Gabriel Metsu. He painted no fewer than fifteen market scenes over the course of his
short career, making it the most popular theme in his oeuvre. Despite the prevalenceof this subject matter in the works of Gerrit Dou (1613–75) and Frans van Mieris(1635–81), Metsu painted only one market scene during his Leiden period, Woman
Selling Game from a Stall.[1] Although he executed this work in the vicinity of Dou’s
and Van Mieris’s studios, this painting differs strongly from those two artists’ works,
as well as from Metsu’s own later market scenes, in terms of its large scale, broad
painting technique, figure types and the emphasis on foreground still life elements.
Woman Selling Game from a Stall represents a robust female vendor of game andpoultry who holds up a large hare by one of its paws for the approval of a young
female customer. The coin the young woman holds in her hand indicates that thevendor has been successful in her marketing efforts. The foreground is filled withvarious dead birds, including a goose, a rooster and a duck. A pigeon, having escapedFig 1. Gabriel Metsu, The Dismissal of
Hagar, 1653–54, oil on canvas, 112 x
86 cm, Stedelijk Museum De
Lakenhal, Leiden, S 2209, purchasedwith support of Vereniging Rembrandt

from its tipped-over wicker cage, is distracted by a black-and-white dog sniffing a© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Woman Selling Game from a Stall
Page 3 of 9dead rooster in the left foreground. A few other vending stalls are visible in the left
background.
This ambitious youthful work measures 159.1 x 124.9 cm, making it one of thelargest pictures of Metsu’s entire oeuvre.[2] Its enormous size suggests that he painted
it on commission rather than for the free market. It seems exceptional that someone
would have ordered this work from the young artist, who had no previous experiencein painting large still lifes. In fact, Woman Selling Game from a Stall is the first of
Metsu’s paintings to feature any animal other than a dog.[3]The piece is foremost a response to the work of the Utrecht artist Jan Baptist Weenix(1621–60/61). Metsu came into contact with Weenix through Nicolaus Knüpfer (ca.
1603–55), with whom he probably apprenticed in the early 1650s.

[4]

Weenix, who is

known to have collaborated with Knüpfer, was a specialist in both Italianate
landscapes and animal still lifes.[5] The clearest confirmation of Metsu’s admiration

Fig 2. Jan Baptist Weenix, Game Still
Life with Hunter, 1652, oil on canvas,
138 x 195 cm, Bayersiche
Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte
Pinakothek, Munich, bpk, Berlin /Alte Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY

for Weenix’s paintings is his early The Dismissal of Hagar, ca. 1653–54 (fig 1). The
stocky, muscular figures and Mediterranean setting in that painting call to mind the
shepherdesses in Weenix’s Italianate landscapes.[6] Moreover, the fluid painting
technique, the manner of underpainting the composition, and the choice of pigments
are also similar to that Utrecht master’s style.[7]Stylistically, Woman Selling Game from a Stall relates to Weenix’s The Dismissal of
Hagar. Metsu executed both paintings with elongated brushwork and they share an
overall greenish-brown palette with a few concentrated accents of white and red.
Furthermore, in both works the figures stand before an open door of a diagonally
receding building covered by an arched wooden awning. Each painting also includes atilted tree in front of the house and a view into the distance.
Although Weenix never seems to have painted a market scene with game and poultry
that could have served as Metsu’s source of inspiration, he did paint a number of large
still lifes. Some of these feature dead hares hanging upside down, as well as ducks,
geese and swans lying on their backs with their heads drooping down (fig 2).[8] It isalso likely that Metsu knew of the market scenes painted by such Flemish artists as
Pieter Aertsen (1507/8–75), Joachim Beuckelaer (ca. 1534–ca. 1574), and Frans
Snyders (1579–1657), which show similar vending stalls with rich displays of various
kinds of game and poultry.[9]Composing this market scene proved challenging to the young artist. The interaction
between the figures is awkward, as the vendor has turned toward the viewer while
addressing the customer behind her. The positioning of the animals, the tables and thecage looks disjointed, even chaotic. Metsu may have exaggerated perspective effects
to accommodate a client’s wish to hang the painting in an elevated position, but his
efforts were not entirely successful.
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Although the muscular physiognomy of Metsu’s vendor is reminiscent of women
Weenix depicted in his paintings of the Italian campagna, her facial features andthose of her customer resemble those in paintings by Maerten Stoop (ca.
1620–47).[10] Stoop was a Utrecht painter whose oeuvre shows a strong affinity withthe work of Knüpfer and Weenix. Although Stoop had died by the time Metsu arrived
in Utrecht, his impact is evident in some of the younger artist’s early Leiden
paintings.[11]The women’s attire here is not typical of contemporary Dutch fashion. A revealing
top that amplifies a woman’s chest to such an extent would hardly have been worn byfemale vendors in the markets of Leiden or Utrecht. Since the mid-sixteenth century,with paintings by Aertsen and Beuckelaer, artists had generally depicted market
women as seductresses, with the foods they sell underscoring their sexuality.[12] Theslashed sleeves of the woman’s red top may have had a similar function. They are notin accordance with contemporary fashion, but they do appear in fantasy costumes
worn by Metsu’s depictions of prostitutes and jesters.[13]The female customer’s hooded cloak is typical of fashions from the southern
Netherlands, which may suggest that Metsu painted this work for a Flemish
immigrant in Leiden.[14] As both of the artist’s parents had originally come from thesouthern Netherlands, the local community of refugees was among the artist’sclientele.[15] Metsu’s most important commission prior to A Woman Selling Game
from a Stall was The Triumph of Justice, which came from Michiel van Peenen, amerchant whose father was from Belle, the present-day Bailleul, near Lille, the samevillage in which Metsu’s father was born.[16] Their shared origins must have been thedetermining factor for Van Peenen to approach Metsu, for the artist was notexperienced in painting such complicated allegories.[17] Likewise, Woman SellingGame from a Stall may have been commissioned from a client with shared Flemishroots.
Although the early provenance of Woman Selling Game from a Stall is unknown, thepainting probably stayed in Leiden for an extended period of time. The eighteenthcentury Leiden painter Louis de Moni (1698–1771), who was a great admirer ofMetsu’s work, painted a copy after it.[18] Although the work is a faithful repetition, it
is far smaller in size (58.5 x 49 cm) than Metsu’s impressive youthful painting.

- Adriaan Waiboer, 2017

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Endnotes
1. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 50–55,
100–4. For more on Metsu’s Vegetable Market in Amsterdam, see ibid., 100–2, 236–37, no. A-94, ill.
2. The largest painting is Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, whichmeasures 134 x 165 cm.
3. Dead and live birds would appear regularly in Metsu’s genre scenes from later in his career, but usually
not more than one or two at a time. The artist’s predilection for representing birds culminated in
1655–58, when he painted a dead white cockerel hanging on a string, a rare independent still life thatallowed him to show off his proficiency in painting feathers. See Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu,
Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 64–66.
4. On Metsu’s relationship with Knüpfer, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A
Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 12–19.
5. On the collaboration between Knüpfer and Weenix, see Carl Willnau, “Die Zusammenarbeit desNikolaus Knüpfer mit anderen Künstlern,” Oud Holland 67 (1952): 210–17; and Jo Saxton, Nicolaus
Knüpfer (1603/09–1655): An Original Artist (Doornspijk, 2005), 41, 43.
6. On Metsu’s relationship with Weenix, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A
Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 23–24.
7. Melanie E. Gifford, “Fine Painting and Eloquent Imprecision: Gabriel Metsu’s Painting Technique,” inGabriel 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.
8. Weenix did paint Market Sellers before Architectural Capricci, undated, oil on canvas, 56 x 44.5 cm, lastrecorded Bernheimer Old Masters, Munich, 1999, photograph at the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie, The Hague, but this painting focuses on the Italianate setting instead of on a rich displayof poultry and game.
9. Sturla J. Gudlaugsson, “Kanttekeningen bij de ontwikkeling van Metsu,” Oud Holland 83 (1968): 16,
already suggested that Metsu may have drawn inspiration from Flemish market scenes.
10. See, for example, Maerten Stoop’s Lady at Her Dressing Table, mid-1640s, oil on panel, 61.5 x 51.5 cm,
present location unknown, last recorded Kunsthandel Cramer, The Hague, 1977, photograph at the
Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague.
11. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 24–25.
12. Keith Moxey, “Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in the Context of
the Reformation” (PhD diss. University of Chicago, 1977), 26–53, 98–102. See also GM-100.
13. See, for instance, Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (NewHaven, 2012), 165–66, nos. A-2, A-3; 236–38, no. A-94, all ill.
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14. Sturla J. Gudlaugsson, “Kanttekeningen bij de ontwikkeling van Metsu,” Oud Holland 83 (1968): 16 n.
11.
15. On the Flemish origins of Metsu’s parents, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A
Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 3–4.
16. Linda Stone-Ferrier, “Metsu’s Justice Protecting Widows and Orphans: Patron and Painter Relationships
and Their Involvement in the Social and Economic Plight of Widows and Orphans in Leiden,” in The
Public and Private in Dutch Culture of the Golden Age, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Adele Seeff(Newark, Del., 2000), passim; 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 of Art) (New Haven, 2010), 101–2.
17. Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, 2012), 17.
18. Louis de Moni’s copy appeared for sale at Sotheby’s, London, 3–4 December 1997, no. 189, ill., as after
G. Metsu. Moni painted several copies after works by Metsu and even seems to have owned works byhim (Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné [New Haven, 2012],
181, copy 2 after no. A-29; 210, copy 5 after no. A-66 [possibly by De Moni]; 277, copy 4 after no. B-7;
284, copy 2 after no. B-16; 290, no. C-14; 290–91, no. C-26; 295, no. C-78).

Provenance[Art dealer Lesser, London, 1887].
Sir Thomas-Fermor Hesketh, 8th Baronet, later 1st Baron Hesketh (1881–1944), Easton Neston,Northamptonshire; thence by direct family descent (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 8 July 2009, no. 9; [Johnny
van Haeften, London]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2009.

Exhibition History
Bath, Holburne Museum of Art, “A Matter of Life and Death,” 23 January–25 March 2007 [no number,lent by Lord and Lady Hesketh].
Bath, Holburne Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, April 2007–March 2008 [lent byLord and Lady Hesketh].
Northampton, Northampton Museum and Art Gallery, January–May 2009, on loan with the permanentcollection [lent by Lord and Lady Hesketh].
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Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, “An Eye for Detail: Dutch Painting fromthe 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 [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
Von Bode, Wilhelm. Rembrandt und seine Zeitgenossen: Charakterbilder der Grossen Meister derholländischen und flämischen Malerschule im iebzehnten Jahrhundert. Leipzig, 1906, 62.
Bredius, Abraham. “Lets over de jeugd van Gabriel Metsu.” Oud Holland 25 (1907): 197.
Krönig, Johann O. “Gabriel Metsu.” Revue de l’art ancien et moderne 25 (1909): 99, 102.
Krönig, Johann O. “Wie was de leermeester van Gabriel Metsu?” In Feest-bundel Dr. Abraham Bredius
aangeboden den achttienden april 1915. Edited by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot et. al., 137, fig. 49.
Amsterdam, 1915.
Von Bode, Wilhelm. Die Meister der holländischen und flämischen Malerschulen. Leipzig, 1917, 90.
Tipping, H, Avery. “Easton Neston, Northamptonshire: The Seat of Sir Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, Bt.”
Country Life 62 (27 August 1927): 302, fig. 11.
Plietzsch, Eduard. “Gabriel Metsu.” Pantheon 17 (1936): 8–9.
Von Bode, Wilhelm. Die Meister der holländischen und flämischen Malerschulen: Neu bearbeitet undergänzt von Eduard Plietszch. Edited by Eduard Plietzsch, 116. Leipzig, 1958.
Gudlaugsson, Sturla J. “Kanttekeningen bij de ontwikkeling van Metsu.” Oud-Holland 83 (1968): 16–17.
Robinson, Franklin W. Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of theGolden Age. New York, 1974, 19, fig. 7.
Honig, Elizabeth. “De Haringkoopvrouw.” In Leidse Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris
de Jonge, 1630–1760. Edited by Eric Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizenm, 265, n.
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3. Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal. Zwolle, 1988.
Kleinmann, Ute. “Rahmen und Gerahmtes: Das Spiel mit Darstellungen und Deutung, Eine
Untersuchung des illusionistischen Rahmenmotivs im Oeuvre Gerrit Dous.” PhD diss. University of
Bochum, 1992 / Frankfurt am Main, 1996, 145.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667), Life and Work.” 4 vols. PhD diss. New York
University, 2007, 1: 93–94, 391–92, no. A-10, 4: 1059.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, 2012, 23, 169,
no. A-11.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Woman Selling Game From a Stall.” In Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces
from The Leiden Collection. Edited by Lara Yeager-Crasselt, 112; 183, no. 46. Translated by Li Ying.
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, 160–61.
Yeager-Crasselt, Lara. “Woman Selling Game from a Stall.” In The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection. Edited by Polina Lyubimova, 118–19; 236, no. 26. 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.
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, 161, no. 80. [Exhibition catalogue also published in French and Arabic.]

Versions
Versions and Copies
1. Louis de Moni (1698–1771), A Woman Selling Game from a Stall, oil on panel, 58.5 x 49 cm,
whereabouts unknown (sale, Sotheby’s, London, 3–4 December, 1997, no. 189).

Technical Summary
The support is composed of two pieces of medium-weight, plain-weave fabric joined with a vertical seam,
which transverses the basket and tree. The upper corners and all four tacking margins have been removed.
Fabric inserts along the upper corners complete the rectangular format in which the painting has been
lined.[1] Pronounced cusping along the upper and lower edges and slight cusping along the left and right edges
suggest the original dimensions have not been significantly altered. There are paper labels and white chalkbut no wax collection seals, stencils or import stamps along the lining or stretcher.
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A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The paint has been applied with broad transparent
brushstrokes through the sky and brown foreground, which allows the light-colored underlayer to show
through, and smoothly in opaque layers of rich paste blended wet-into-wet through the figures. The feathersof the goose have been painted with dry brushwork and low impasto, and the gold strands of the wheat stalks
lying in the foreground have been applied wet-over-dry.
No underdrawing or compositional changes are readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000
nanometers.
The painting is signed in dark paint on the side of the wooden barrel along the lower right, but is undated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2009 aside from minor
consolidation along the vertical seam in 2012. The painting remains in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The straight radiuses of the triangular-shaped inserts are 9–11 cm in length. The third edge of eachinsert is rounded like a circle wedge.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection