拍品专文
Gabriel Metsu was a founding member of the Guild of Saint Luke in Leiden, a city known for its fijnschilders ('fine painters'), so named on account of their meticulous manner of painting. Around 1650, Metsu probably spent time in Utrecht, as his paintings from this period resemble the works of Utrecht artists Nicolaus Knupfer and Jan Baptist Weenix. In 1657, he settled in Amsterdam, painting scenes of elegant young women in rich interiors in the vein of Gerard ter Borch and – less frequently – rough-hewn figures, among them several images of smokers.
Adriaan Waiboer has noted that, much like Gerrit Dou, men feature far less prominently in Metsu’s work than women (op. cit., p. 61). Moreover, the present painting is one of only two known examples of single male figures painted in the artist’s early years in Amsterdam. The other depicts an officer engaged in the same activity (fig. 1; Salzburg, Residenzgalerie). Much like Metsu’s paintings of elegant women in interiors, these two works display the influence of ter Borch’s smokers painted earlier in the decade. However, unlike ter Borch, Metsu’s smokers are solitary figures removed from the company of others.
In the seventeenth century, images of smokers evoked vanitas associations, with the rapid diffusion of smoke suggestive of the transience of life. In this painting, Metsu suppressed any overt narrative, emphasising instead the studied naturalism of the scene. He has carefully delineated the line of the man's mouth clenching his pipe and the tension in his wrist. Metsu frequently relished depicting such details, which lend his works a true-to-life appearance. For example, a picture of a smoker now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. SK-A-250), includes a barrel bearing the symbol of the Red Stag, a tavern near Metsu's home on the Prisengracht (see L. Stone-Ferrier, 'Gabriel Metsu's Vegetable Market at Amsterdam: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Market Paintings and Horticulture', Art Bulletin, LXXI, 1989, p. 448). In this panel, the man’s coat and wooden chair are identical to that of the Rijksmuseum picture, suggesting it may also have been based on the artist’s immediate surroundings. It is perhaps on account of the painting’s verisimilitude that several earlier scholars – including Smith (1833), Hofstede de Groot (1908) and van Hall (1963) – erroneously considered the man to be a self-portrait. However, his features bear little resemblance to the artist’s two known self-portraits, the Self-Portrait as a Painter in the Royal Collection and the Self-Portrait with a Pipe, last seen with the dealers Boehler and Steinmeyer in Lucerne in 1921 (see Waiboer, op. cit., nos. A-49 and B-17).
Adriaan Waiboer has noted that, much like Gerrit Dou, men feature far less prominently in Metsu’s work than women (op. cit., p. 61). Moreover, the present painting is one of only two known examples of single male figures painted in the artist’s early years in Amsterdam. The other depicts an officer engaged in the same activity (fig. 1; Salzburg, Residenzgalerie). Much like Metsu’s paintings of elegant women in interiors, these two works display the influence of ter Borch’s smokers painted earlier in the decade. However, unlike ter Borch, Metsu’s smokers are solitary figures removed from the company of others.
In the seventeenth century, images of smokers evoked vanitas associations, with the rapid diffusion of smoke suggestive of the transience of life. In this painting, Metsu suppressed any overt narrative, emphasising instead the studied naturalism of the scene. He has carefully delineated the line of the man's mouth clenching his pipe and the tension in his wrist. Metsu frequently relished depicting such details, which lend his works a true-to-life appearance. For example, a picture of a smoker now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. SK-A-250), includes a barrel bearing the symbol of the Red Stag, a tavern near Metsu's home on the Prisengracht (see L. Stone-Ferrier, 'Gabriel Metsu's Vegetable Market at Amsterdam: Seventeenth-Century Dutch Market Paintings and Horticulture', Art Bulletin, LXXI, 1989, p. 448). In this panel, the man’s coat and wooden chair are identical to that of the Rijksmuseum picture, suggesting it may also have been based on the artist’s immediate surroundings. It is perhaps on account of the painting’s verisimilitude that several earlier scholars – including Smith (1833), Hofstede de Groot (1908) and van Hall (1963) – erroneously considered the man to be a self-portrait. However, his features bear little resemblance to the artist’s two known self-portraits, the Self-Portrait as a Painter in the Royal Collection and the Self-Portrait with a Pipe, last seen with the dealers Boehler and Steinmeyer in Lucerne in 1921 (see Waiboer, op. cit., nos. A-49 and B-17).