GABRIEL METSU 
(LEIDEN 1629-1667 AMSTERDAM)
GABRIEL METSU 
(LEIDEN 1629-1667 AMSTERDAM)
GABRIEL METSU 
(LEIDEN 1629-1667 AMSTERDAM)
1 更多
GABRIEL METSU 
(LEIDEN 1629-1667 AMSTERDAM)
4 更多
PROPERTY OF A DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN COLLECTOR
GABRIEL METSU (LEIDEN 1629-1667 AMSTERDAM)

A smoker lighting his pipe

细节
GABRIEL METSU
(LEIDEN 1629-1667 AMSTERDAM)
A smoker lighting his pipe
signed 'G: Metsü.' (on the table edge, lower right)
oil on panel
9 1⁄8 x 8 3⁄8 in. (23.2 x 21.2 cm.)
来源
Anonymous sale [Lenglier]; his sale, Lebrun a.o., Paris, 24-27 April 1786, lot 80 (FF 1,100).
Anonymous sale; Saubert, Paris, 25 March 1793, lot 55, as 'L'intérieur d'un appartement où l'on voit un homme vêtu d'un habit brun et linge blanc rabattu sur le col, la tête couverte d'un chapeau. Il est assis devant une table et allumant sa pipe; à côté est un réchaux, un verre, un bocal et un linge. Ce tableau, qui est d'une touche legère et savante, est du beau faire de ce maître. Haut. 9 pouces, larg. 8 pouces et demi'.
Féréol Bonnemaison (1766-1827), Paris; his sale, Lebrun a.o., Paris, 15-17 July 1802, lot 92 (FF 500 to Bouteville).
(Possibly) J.S. Lazarus, Elisabeth’s Cottage, George Green, Langley Park, Buckinghamshire (according to Waiboer, op. cit.).
with John Mitchell, London, by 1957, from whom acquired by the following,
Private collection, and by descent; [The Property of a Private Collector]; Christie’s, London, 3 July 2012, lot 13, where acquired by the present owner.
出版
J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French Painters, IV, London, 1833, p. 109, no. 118, as ‘A Portrait of the Artist’.
(Possibly) E.W. Moes, Iconographia Batava: Beredeneerde lijst van geschilderde en gebeeldhouwde portretten van Noord-Nederlanders in vorige eeuwen, II, Amsterdam, 1905, p. 95, no. 5005, no. 11.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century, I, London, 1908, p. 325, no. 230a, as a self-portrait.
H. van Hall, Portretten van Nederlandse beeldende kunstenaars, Amsterdam, 1963, p. 207, no. 4, as a self-portrait.
S.J. Gudlaugsson, ‘Kanttekeningen bij de ontwikkeling van Metsu,’ Oud Holland, LXXXIII, 1968, pp. 19 and 25, fig. 8.
F.W. Robinson, Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667): A Study of his Place in Dutch Genre Painting of the Golden Age, New York, 1974, p. 48, fig. 112.
A.E. Waiboer, Gabriel Metsu Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné, New Haven and London, 2012, pp. 61 and 198, no. A-52, illustrated.
A.E. Waiboer, ‘Gone up in Smoke? Gabriel Metsu’s “Missing” Self-Portrait with a Pipe,’ E. Buijsen, C. Dumas and V. Manuth, eds., Face Book: Studies on Dutch and Flemish Portraiture of the 16th-18th Centuries, Leiden, 2012, pp. 313 and 315, fig. 5.
展览
Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, February-May 2014, on loan.
刻印
W. Pether, 1768.

荣誉呈献

Maja Markovic
Maja Markovic Director, Head of Evening Sale

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).

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