Woman Cleaning Fishca. 1657–58

Gabriel Metsu(Leiden 1629 – 1667 Amsterdam)oil on canvas
30.5 x 27.3 cm
signed in brown paint along table edge, lower
left: “G Metsu”
GM-100© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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How To Cite
Waiboer, Adriaan. "Woman Cleaning Fish." 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

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

Comparative Figures

painted four works in which an attractive young woman is shown handlingfish or vegetables in front of a brick house.[1] In Woman Cleaning Fish, thewoman smiles sensually toward the viewer as she displays a plaice(flatfish) that she is about to clean with her knife. Judging from the otherplaice 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, the woman must be a fish vendor, even though she isrespectably 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.

Fig 1. Gerrit Dou, The Pancake
Baker, ca. 1650–55, oil on panel,
44.2 x 34 cm, Galleria degli Uffizi,Florence, P553, Bridgeman
Images

These artists represented attractive young women in the presence of acornucopia of meat, fowl, fish, and vegetables, usually with a small biblicalepisode in the background. The seductively displayed foods in theforeground in Aertsen’s and Beuckelaer’s works symbolize the voluptas
carnis and function as an antithesis to the scriptural narrative of thebackground scene.[3] When Metsu depicted food vendors, he omitted thebiblical narratives, but through pose and gesture he often alluded to thesexual connotations of women and food found 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 andFig 2. Gerrit Dou, A Maid andBoy Enframed, 1652, oil on panel,
33 x 23.8 cm, Staatliche
Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe, 266

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 vanMieris (1635–81). For example, Dou’s The Pancake Baker (fig 1) from theearly 1650s (Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) and Van Mieris’s Fruit Seller ofca. 1655 (British Royal 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 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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning Fish
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Mieris, the viewer merely observes the financial transaction between thevendor and her customer, whereas in Metsu’s painting the viewer is theobject 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
the late 1640s and early 1650s that Metsu would have known, since hewas still living in Leiden at that time. For example, Dou depicted young
kitchen maids and shop vendors at open windows enticing the viewer topurchase their wares. As if their bare arms and visible cleavage were notenough 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) (fig2), the woman vendor lifts up a fish in a manner similar to that seen in
Metsu’s painting.[7] Another of Dou’s paintings of a seductive young
kitchen maid that Metsu may have known (now lost but known through acopy by Van Mieris) is A Young Woman Gathering Water from a Well (fig3).[8] Not only is the setting, including a brick wall attached to the house,

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(last recorded sale, Christie’s,London, April 2, 1976, no. 37,
photograph at RKD (Rijksbureauvoor Kunsthistorische
Documentatie/Netherlands
Institute for Art History)

similar to that of Woman Cleaning Fish, but the fruit on the makeshift tablesimilarly alludes to the woman’s fertility.[9] In each of these works thewoman has directed her attention to the viewer.
Metsu’s Woman Cleaning Fish draws upon Dou’s and Van Mieris’s
market scenes and their images of seductive kitchen maids, but heconceived this work in a direct and appealing manner uniquely his own.
Although the woman in Metsu’s painting has a warm and inviting smile thatsuggests that her fish are not the only thing on offer, the sexual allure isunderstated because of the woman’s respectable attire. Metsu must haveenjoyed commercial success with this approach, given that he painted
variations of the subject four different times soon after he moved toAmsterdam. Only one Dutch artist from later generations followed Metsu inthis 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), forexample, copied Woman Cleaning Fish in 1804.[11]-Adriaan Waiboer© 2017 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
Gallery of 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 in
the 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 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 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,” inFrans 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
the Sixteenth 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.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning FishPage 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 by John Smith . 8 vols.
London, 1907–27, 1:288, no. 121. Translated from Beschreibendes und kritischesVerzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts .
10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Edwards, JoLynn. Expert et marchand de tableaux à la fin du XVIIIe siècle: AlexandreJoseph Paillet. Paris, 1984, 53, 313.
Fredericksen, Burton B. and Peronnet, Benjamin et al., eds.Répertoire des tableaux vendus© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Woman Cleaning Fish
Page 7 of 8en France au XIXe siècle. 1 vol. to date. Los Angeles, 1998, 1:686.
Sutton, Peter C. and Ambrose, Jennifer. Pleasures of Collecting: Part 1, Renaissance toImpressionist Masterpieces. Exh. cat. Greenwich, Conn., Bruce Museum of Arts andScience. Greenwich, 2002, 83–84, ill. on p. 23.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. “Gabriel Metsu (1629–1667): Life and Work.” 4 vols. Ph.D. diss. NewYork 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. Exh. cat. Dublin, National
Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art. New
Haven, 2010, 78.
Waiboer, Adriaan E. Gabriel Metsu, Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné. New Havenand 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).

Versions Notes

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 a larger stretched fabric. There are no wax collection seals, stencils or importstamps along the lining 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.
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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.
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 good state of preservation despite small areas of restored paint loss along the brickwork inthe upper 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.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection