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METSU Gabriel/
ARTISTS BEFORE 1650/ ART MAIN
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(b. 1629, Leiden, d. 1667,
Amsterdam)
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Dutch painter, active in his native Leiden,
then in Amsterdam, where he had moved by 1657. Houbraken says he trained
with Dou, but Metsu’s early works are very different from his –
typically historical and mythological scenes, broadly rather than
minutely painted. Metsu also painted portraits and still-lifes, but his
most characteristic works are genre scenes, some of which rank among the
finest of their period. He concentrated on scenes of genteel
middle-class life, fairly close to de Hooch and Terborch in style, but
with a personal stamp. One of his best-known works, The Sick Child (Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam), is often compared with Vermeer. His work is rarely dated, so
his development and relationships with other artists are difficult to
trace.
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artists before 1650 bookshop (UK) |
Gabriel Metsu (uk) (usa)(de)
(fr) |
Breakfast
1660
Oil on wood, 55,5 x 42
The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
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(Detail) |
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The painting is also known by the title
"Oyster Eaters". It is a painting from the best period of the artist. |
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Vegetable Market in Amsterdam
1661-62
Oil on canvas, 97 x 81,3 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris |
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Horticulture was as potent a source of pride
and livelihood in the Dutch Republic as livestock. The vegetable market
painted by Gabriel Metsu displays an impressive variety of cabbages and
root vegetables against a backdrop of the Prinsengracht, one of
Amsterdam’s finest canals. Metsu gave pride of place to the Horn carrot
(the orange root in the cane basket) and the cauliflower, both of them
expensive vegetables that Dutch growers had recently developed; they are
contrasted with turnips and other staples of Dutch cooking. The canal
calls attention to an enabling factor of Amsterdam’s economy: its ready
access to Holland’s network of waterways.
In setting and motifs, the painting is about Amsterdam’s flourishing
vegetal and economic cultures, both the subject of numerous laudatory
descriptions. While such specific market pictures had some general
precedents, their combination of actual sites with the best of locally
grown produce constitutes their novelty, and even their
seventeenth-century Dutchness. |
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Poultry Seller
1662
Oak, 61,5 x 45,5 cm
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden |
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