Woman Cleaning Fish
Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)ca. 1657–58
oil on canvas
30.5 x 27.3 cm
signed in brown paint along table edge, lower left:“G Metsu”
GM-100© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. “Woman Cleaning Fish” (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/ (archivedDecember 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.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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In the mid-1650s, soon after he moved to Amsterdam, Gabriel Metsu painted fourComparative Figures

works in which an attractive young woman is shown handling fish or vegetables infront of a brick house.[1] In Woman Cleaning Fish, the woman smiles sensually toward
the viewer as she displays a plaice (flatfish) that she is about to clean with her knife.
Judging from the other plaice in the wicker basket on her wooden table, the two large
fish displayed on a large earthenware platter, and the set of scales hanging from abrick wall, the woman must be a fish vendor, even though she is respectably outfitted
in a black dress with a large white linen collar.[2]Woman Cleaning Fish belongs to a long tradition of images of female food sellers andmaids at work that stretches back to the market and kitchen scenes that Pieter Aertsen(1507/08–75) and his pupil Joachim Beuckelaer (ca. 1534–ca. 1574) painted in themid-sixteenth century. These artists represented attractive young women in thepresence of a cornucopia of meat, fowl, fish, and vegetables, usually with a small
biblical episode in the background. The seductively displayed foods in the foregroundFig 1. Gerrit Dou, The Pancake Baker,
ca. 1650–55, oil on panel, 44.2 x 34
cm, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence,
P553, Bridgeman Images

in Aertsen’s and Beuckelaer’s works symbolize the voluptas carnis and function as anantithesis to the scriptural narrative of the background scene.[3] When Metsu depicted
food vendors, he omitted the biblical narratives, but through pose and gesture heoften alluded to the sexual connotations of women and food found in these earlier
prototypes.[4]A number of Dutch artists depicted female vendors of food, and it is instructive tocompare their varied approaches to the subject. The most prolific painter of outdoor
market scenes was Hendrick Martensz Sorgh (1609/11–70) from Rotterdam, who
generally represented the hustle and bustle of urban markets in which female vendors
and shoppers haggle over the price of fish and vegetables.[5] More direct visual
prototypes for Metsu’s female food vendors are to be found in the work of artists
from Metsu’s native Leiden, particularly Gerrit Dou (1613–75) and Frans van Mieris(1635–81). For example, Dou’s The Pancake Baker (fig 1) from the early 1650s

Fig 2. Gerrit Dou, A Maid and Boy
Enframed, 1652, oil on panel, 33 x
23.8 cm, Staatliche Kunsthalle,Karlsruhe, 266(Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) and Van Mieris’s Fruit Seller of ca. 1655 (BritishRoyal Collection) both focus on a single vendor in a quiet, rustic location.[6] Much
like Metsu, Dou and Van Mieris placed their female vendors before an open door of arustic brick house overgrown with vines. Nevertheless, a different relationship exists
between the viewer and these scenes than in Woman Cleaning Fish. In the paintings
by Dou and Van Mieris, the viewer merely observes the financial transaction between
the vendor and her customer, whereas in Metsu’s painting the viewer is the object ofthe vendor’s attention.
The direct gaze and attractive appearance of the woman in the Leiden Collection
painting relates to other subject types that Dou painted during the late 1640s and early© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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1650s that Metsu would have known, since he was still living in Leiden at that time.
For example, Dou depicted young kitchen maids and shop vendors at open windows
enticing the viewer to purchase their wares. As if their bare arms and visible cleavage
were not enough to make them look desirable, Dou usually also included hares,poultry, carrots, or other objects to emphasize their sexuality. In one such painting,A Maid and Boy Enframed (Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe) (fig 2), the woman
vendor lifts up a fish in a manner similar to that seen in Metsu’s painting.[7] Anotherof Dou’s paintings of a seductive young kitchen maid that Metsu may have known(now lost but known through a copy by Van Mieris) is A Young Woman Gathering
Water from a Well (fig 3).[8] Not only is the setting, including a brick wall attached tothe house, similar to that of Woman Cleaning Fish, but the fruit on the makeshifttable similarly alludes to the woman’s fertility.[9] In each of these works the woman
has directed her attention to the viewer.
Metsu’s Woman Cleaning Fish draws upon Dou’s and Van Mieris’s market scenes andtheir images of seductive kitchen maids, but he conceived this work in a direct andappealing manner uniquely his own. Although the woman in Metsu’s painting has awarm and inviting smile that suggests that her fish are not the only thing on offer, theFig 3. Frans van Mieris after Gerrit
Dou, A Young Woman Gathering
Water from a Well, ca. 1650–55, oilon panel, 24.2 x 19.1 cm, presentlocation unknown (last recorded sale,Christie’s, London, April 2, 1976, no.
37, photograph at RKD (Rijksbureauvoor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands Institutefor Art History)

sexual allure is understated because of the woman’s respectable attire. Metsu musthave enjoyed commercial success with this approach, given that he painted variationsof the subject four different times soon after he moved to Amsterdam. Only one
Dutch artist from later generations followed Metsu in this approach: Godefridus
Schalcken (1643–1706), whose Woman Holding a Herring from 1685–90 seems
indebted to Metsu’s vendors.[10] Eighteenth-century watercolorists also took aninterest in Metsu’s market scenes. The Amsterdam artist Anna de Frey (ca.
1775–1808), for example, copied Woman Cleaning Fish in 1804.[11]- Adriaan Waiboer, 2017

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning FishPage 5 of 8Endnotes
1. For the other three paintings, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A CatalogueRaisonné (New Haven and London, 2012), 189–92, nos. A-41, A-43, A-44, all ill. (No. A-41, Woman
Cleaning Carrots, is also in The Leiden Collection.)
2. Linda Stone-Ferrier, “Gabriel Metsu’s Street Vendors: Shopping for Values in the Dutch
Neighbourhood,” 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), 78.
3. Keith P. F. Moxey, “Pieter Aertsen, Joachim Beuckelaer, and the Rise of Secular Painting in theContext of the Reformation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1977), 26–53, 98–102.
4. On the sexual connotation of mid-seventeenth-century genre paintings featuring women handling fish,see Eric Jan Sluijter, Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (Zwolle, 2000), 275–76.
5. In Sorgh’s paintings the seller is usually an attractive young woman, but in some of his works a goodlooking female customer is the focal point.
6. For Dou’s painting, see Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou: Des Meisters Gemälde in 247 Abbildungen(Stuttgart and Berlin, 1913), 136; for Van Mieris’s painting, see Otto Naumann, Frans van Mieris(1635–1681) the Elder, 2 vols. (Doornspijk, 1981), 2:14–15, no. 10, pl. 10.
7. In other works, Dou depicted young women holding up dead roosters or baskets with fruit in this sameway. See Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou: Des Meisters Gemälde in 247 Abbildungen (Stuttgart and Berlin,1913), 113 (right), 120, both ill.
8. Otto Naumann, Frans van Mieris (1635–1681) the Elder, 2 vols. (Doornspijk, 1981), 1:43; 2:11–13, no.
7, fig. 7. Quentin Buvelot, “Frans van Mieris’ Reputation,” in Frans van Mieris 1635–1681, ed. Quentin
Buvelot (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) (New Haven,2005), 15, fig. 1. Katharina Schmidt et al., Die Sammlung Max Geldner im Kunstmuseum
Basel: Vermächtnis und Ankäufe der Stiftung (Basel, 2000), 103–5, no. 21.
9. Jean-Baptiste Bedaux, “Fruit and Fertility: Fruit Symbolism in Netherlandish Portraiture of theSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Simiolus 17 (1987): passim.
10. Thierry Beherman, Godfried Schalcken (Paris, 1988), 241, no. 147, ill.
11. Anna de Frey’s watercolor was recorded at the sale of J. C. Puyssenaar, Amsterdam (Van derSchley…Vinkeles), 27 February 27 1804, folder B, no. 8.

Provenance© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning Fish
Page 6 of 8(Sale, Paillet and Delaroche, Paris, 18–25 April 1803, no. 143 [sold to Sigismund Ehrenreich, Graf vonRedern, for 1510 francs]).
Marquis Marialva, by 1825 [bought by John Smith for £80 before 1833].
Héris, Brussels, by 1833.
Désiré van den Schrieck, Leuven (her sale, Le Roy, Brussels, 8–11 April, 1861, no. 52 [sold to Allard in
Douai for 6,400 francs]).
Private collection, France (sale, Drouot, Paris, 22 June 1990, no. 22, [sold for 2,000,000 francs];[Agnew’s, London, 1992; Agnew’s / Salomon Lilian B. V., Amsterdam, 2001]).
Private collection, The Hague, by 2001 [Salomon Lilian B. V., Amsterdam, 2004].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2004.

Exhibition History
Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum of Arts and Science, “Pleasures of Collecting: Part I, Renaissance toImpressionist Masterpieces,” 21 September 2002–5 January 2003, [no number, lent by privatecollection].
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, September 2009–April
2013 [lent by the present owner].

References
Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French
Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829–42, 4:93, no. 62.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters ofthe Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke, 1:288, no. 121. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis
der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen andParis, 1907–28.
Edwards, JoLynn. Expert et marchand de tableaux à la fin du XVIIIe siècle: Alexandre-Joseph Paillet.
Paris, 1984, 53, 313.
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Benjamin Peronnet et al., eds. Répertoire des tableaux vendus en France au
XIXe siècle. Los Angeles, 1998,686.
Sutton, Peter C., and Jennifer Ambrose. Pleasures of Collecting: Part 1, Renaissance to Impressionist
Masterpieces. Exh. cat. Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum of Arts and Sciences. Greenwich, 2002,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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83–84, ill. on p. 23.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): Life and Work.” 4 vols. PhD diss. New York
University, 2007, 1:135, 515–17, no. A-54, 4:1103.
Stone-Ferrier, Linda. “Gabriel Metsu’s Street Vendors Shopping for Values in the Dutch
Neighbourhood.” In Gabriel Metsu. Edited by Adriaan Waiboer, 78. Exh. cat. Dublin, National Galleryof Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington, National Gallery of Art. New Haven, 2010.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven and London,
2012, 52, 190, no. A-42.

Versions
Versions and Copies
1. Woman Cleaning Fish, oil on panel, arched top, 32.5 x 24.4 cm (Abbé de Gévigney, his sale, Paillet,Paris, 1–29 December 1779, no. 225), presumably a copy of GM-100.

2. Aletta de Freij (1768–1808), Woman Cleaning Fish, watercolor (sale, Van der Schley… Vinkeles,
Amsterdam, 27 February 1804, “Kunstboek B,” no. 8).

Technical Summary
The support is a lined, fine plain-weave fabric. The left, right, and upper tacking margins have been removed
and remnants of the lower tacking margin remain. Viewed left to right, the horizontal threads slope upward
across the width of the painting approximately 5 cm. Pronounced cusping along the left vertical edge, but notalong the right, suggests the support was cut from a larger stretched fabric. There are no wax collection seals,stencils or import stamps along the lining canvas. A maker’s mark is embossed along the left stretchermember.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by a buff-colored underlayer. The painthas been thinly and smoothly applied with no visible brushwork or use of impasto. Details such as the vines
have been applied in thin transparent glazes.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images at 900–1700 nanometers.[1] Pentimenti along thefigure’s proper left arm indicate the upper arm has been widened, and pentimenti along the pot indicate thechains have been shifted to the left.
The painting is signed in dark paint along the table edge in the lower left quadrant but undated.
The painting has not undergone conservation treatment since its acquisition in 2004. It remains in a goodstate of preservation despite small areas of restored paint loss along the brickwork in the upper right© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Woman Cleaning Fish
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Technical Summary Endnotes

1. The painting was examined at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, with infrared reflectographyusing an Indigo Systems Merlin Near Infrared (NIR) camera.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection