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© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. “Woman Cleaning Fish” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 2nd ed. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/a-woman-cleaning-fish/(archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrativeoccurs.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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

Comparative Figures

four works in which an attractive young woman is shown handling fish orvegetables in front 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 a brick wall, thewoman 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 foodsellers and maids 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 the mid-sixteenth century. These artists
represented attractive young women in the presence of a cornucopia ofFig 1. Gerrit Dou, The PancakeBaker, ca. 1650–55, oil on panel,
44.2 x 34 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi,Florence, P553, Bridgeman
Imagesmeat, fowl, fish, and vegetables, usually with a small biblical episode in thebackground. The seductively displayed foods in the foreground in Aertsen’sand 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 poseand gesture he often alluded to the sexual connotations of women and foodfound in these earlier prototypes.[4]A number of Dutch artists depicted female vendors of food, and it isinstructive to compare their varied approaches to the subject. The mostprolific painter of outdoor market scenes was Hendrick Martensz Sorgh(1609/11–70) from Rotterdam, who generally represented the hustle andbustle of urban markets in which female vendors and shoppers haggle overthe price of fish and vegetables.[5] More direct visual prototypes for Metsu’s

Fig 2. Gerrit Dou, A Maid and Boy
Enframed, 1652, oil on panel, 33 x
23.8 cm, Staatliche Kunsthalle,
Karlsruhe, 266

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 (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) and Van Mieris’s Fruit Seller of ca.
1655 (British Royal Collection) both focus on a single vendor in a quiet, rusticlocation.[6] Much like Metsu, Dou and Van Mieris placed their female vendors
before an open door of a rustic brick house overgrown with vines.
Nevertheless, a different relationship exists between the viewer and thesescenes than in Woman Cleaning Fish. In the paintings by Dou and Van
Mieris, the viewer merely observes the financial transaction between thevendor and her customer, whereas in Metsu’s painting the viewer is the© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning FishPage 4 of 8object of the 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 thelate 1640s and early 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 theirwares. As if their bare arms and visible cleavage were not enough to makethem look desirable, Dou usually also included hares, poultry, carrots, orother objects to emphasize their sexuality. In one such painting, A Maid andBoy 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 to the house, similar to that of Woman
Cleaning Fish, but the fruit on the makeshift table similarly alludes to thewoman’s fertility.[9] In each of these works the woman has directed her
attention to the viewer.

Fig 3. Frans van Mieris after Gerrit
Dou, A Young Woman Gathering
Water from a Well, ca. 1650–55,
oil on panel, 24.2 x 19.1 cm,
present location unknown (lastrecorded sale, Christie’s, London,April 2, 1976, no. 37, photographat RKD (Rijksbureau voor
Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands
Institute for Art History)

Metsu’s Woman Cleaning Fish draws upon Dou’s and Van Mieris’s market
scenes and their images of seductive kitchen maids, but he conceived thiswork in a direct and appealing manner uniquely his own. Although thewoman in Metsu’s painting has a warm and inviting smile that suggests thather fish are not the only thing on offer, the sexual allure is understatedbecause of the woman’s respectable attire. Metsu must have enjoyedcommercial success with this approach, given that he painted variations of
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 an interest 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

© 2020 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
Catalogue Raisonné (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 Galleryof Ireland; 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 inthe Context 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 womenhandling 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 good-looking 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 OttoNaumann, 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 inthis same way. 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., DieSammlung 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 (Vander Schley…Vinkeles), 27 February 27 1804, folder B, no. 8.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning Fish
Page 6 of 8Provenance(Sale, Paillet and Delaroche, Paris, 18–25 April 1803, no. 143 [sold to Sigismund Ehrenreich,Graf von Redern, 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 [soldto Allard in Douai for 6,400 francs]).
Private collection, France (sale, Drouot, Paris, 22 June 1990, no. 22, [sold for 2,000,000francs]; [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 to Impressionist Masterpieces,” 21 September 2002–5 January 2003, [nonumber, lent by private collection].
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, andFrench 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 of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translatedby Edward G. Hawke, 1: 288, no. 121. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published asBeschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen
Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Edwards, JoLynn. Expert et marchand de tableaux à la fin du XVIIIe siècle: Alexandre-JosephPaillet. Paris, 1984, 53, 313.
Fredericksen, Burton B., and Benjamin Peronnet et al., eds. Répertoire des tableaux vendus© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning FishPage 7 of 8

en France au XIXe siècle. Los Angeles, 1998,686.
Sutton, Peter C., and Jennifer Ambrose. Pleasures of Collecting: Part 1, Renaissance toImpressionist Masterpieces. Exh. cat. Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum of Arts andSciences. Greenwich, 2002, 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
Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington, National Gallery of Art. New
Haven, 2010.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven andLondon, 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 havebeen removed and remnants of the lower tacking margin remain. Viewed left to right, thehorizontal threads slope upward across the width of the painting approximately 5 cm. Pronounced
cusping along the left vertical edge, but not along the right, suggests the support was cut from alarger stretched fabric. There are no wax collection seals, stencils or import stamps along thelining canvas. A maker’s mark is embossed along the left stretcher member.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied followed by a buff-colored underlayer.
The paint has 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 the figure’s proper left arm indicate the upper arm has been widened, and pentimenti along
the pot indicate the chains have been shifted to the left.
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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 ina good state of preservation despite small areas of restored paint loss along the brickwork in theupper right quadrant.

Technical Summary Endnotes

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

© 2020 The Leiden Collection