Item | Waddesdon Manor

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artist or maker

Metsu, Gabriel (b.1629, d.1669)

Date

1662-1665

dated stylistically

Place of production

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Medium

oil on panel

Type of object

paintings

Accession number

2571

Small oil painting of a lady playing a lute, while a cavalier watches her. The lady sits on the right with one foot raised on a foot warmer. She is wearing a white cap decorated with thread loops, a scarlet fur-trimmed jacket, and a white silk petticoat. The cavalier sits on the left. He wears a hat with a feather, and a pink sash over his uniform. A blue and gold flag is propped up behind him. He holds up a wine glass. A small spaniel dog seeks attention at his heels. Behind, there is a table covered with a red patterned rug, with a silver plate of oysters and silver lidded urn on top. In the background, to the left, there is a high fireplace with a Corinthian column supporting a mantelpiece with a sculpted frieze with foliate forms surmounted by a panel bearing a cartouche. On the back wall there is a large tapestry of a full-length woman and child seated in a landscape, possibly the Virgin Mary and Christ Child. On the right, there is a curtain and a view through to a bedroom with a four-poster bed.

Traditionally known as ‘The Tête-à-Tête’, this painting is characteristic of the high-life genre scenes for which Metsu is particularly celebrated. While the carriage, manners and dress of the figures and the expensively furnished interior are carefully described, the narrative possibilities of the scene are left more open. The viewer is encouraged to create a story around the visual elements.

Commentary

The painting focuses on a single moment. The man offers the woman a glass of wine. He holds it by the stem as polite etiquette manuals of the period prescribed. The man looks at the woman’s face. She looks at the glass, not at the man. She has stopped her music making to consider his gesture. This seems to be a potential turning point for the woman and she must chose how to conduct herself. However, the details of the choice and her possible response are not made clear.

The woman may be entertaining a suitor or she may be a prostitute entertaining a client. The man wears a uniform and the flag of his troop is visible behind him. Wearing a feathered hat, he has entered the woman’s domestic space from the world outside. The painting is full of sexual innuendo. The bright light in the room behind gives prominence to the bed. The cavalier’s sword points towards the woman’s foot warmer which was a common symbol of female sexual desire in the seventeenth century. Oysters - on the plate between the couple – were believed to stimulate lust. The tapestry on the shadowy back wall of the room seems to depict the Virgin and Child, which introduces a moralising note to the scene.

This was one of the several paintings that five members of the Rothschild family bought from the celebrated Van Loon collection in 1877. Born in Leiden, Metsu also worked in Utrecht and Amsterdam.

Juliet Carey and Phillippa Plock, 2012

Physical description

Dimensions (mm) / weight (mg)

400 x 475

Signature & date

signed, upper right on the door lintel: G. Metsūe

Labels

Morning Room
Metzu Right of fireplace
Label
on verso on panel

Morning Room
Right of fireplace
Extreme Left (Bottom)
Label
on verso

107
Label
on panel on verso

History

Provenance

Possibly owned by Jeronimus Tonneman (b.1687, d.1750 ) around 1718; Acquired by Willem van Loon (b.1794, d.1847) before 1826; inherited by his wife Annewies van Loon (b.1793, d.1877); sold from the estate of Anneweis van Loon, listed as 'L'entreuvue', lot 2, no. 53, valued at 200,000 fr in manuscript relating to sale (Rothschild Archive London RAL 000/848); acquired by Ferdinand de Rothschild (b.1839, d.1898) from van Loon collection; inherited by his sister Alice de Rothschild (b.1847, d.1922); inherited by her great-nephew James de Rothschild (b.1878, d.1957); bequeathed to Waddesdon (National Trust) in 1957.

Exhibition history

Royal Academy Exhibition, London, 1880, no. 74, lent by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild

Collection

Waddesdon (National Trust)
Bequest of James de Rothschild, 1957

Bibliography

Arnold Houbraken; De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstchilders en shilderessen; 3 vols; Arnold Houbraken; 1718-1721; vol. 3, pp. 41-42; possibly describes this work (quoted in Roelofs (2010)).
John Smith; A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters; 9 vols; London; Smith and Son; 1829-1842; vol. 4, p. 103, no. 95, suppl. no. 27.
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot; A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. Vols 1-4 [1907-1927]; Bishops Stortford; Chadwick Healey; 1976; vol. 1, pp. 295-96, no. 148; wrongly as in collection of Edmond de Rothschild, Paris.
Christopher White, Dutch and Flemish Paintings at Waddesdon Manor, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 54, August 1959, 67-74; pp. 71-72, fig. 4, p. 78, n. 8; gives incorrect provenance.
♦; Sir Francis Watson, The Art Collections at Waddesdon Manor I: The Paintings, Apollo, 69, June 1959, 172-182; p. 181, XII, p. 177, fig XII.
Ellis Waterhouse, Anthony Blunt; Paintings: The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor; Fribourg; Office du Livre, The National Trust; 1967; pp. 156-157, cat. no. 65, ill.
Uwe M. Schneede, Gabriel Metsu und der hollandische Realismus, Oud Holland, 83, 1968, 45-61; pp. 52, 60, fig. 14.
♦; Mark Girouard, Insatiable and discerning: Curiosity-hunting with the Rothschilds, Apollo, 139, 1994, 14-19; p. 18, fig. 5.
5454; pp. 119-121, fig. 84; as 'A Man Offering a Glass of Wine to a Woman Tuning a Lute', dated 1662-1665.
Adriaan Waiboer; Gabriel Metsu: Life and Work: A Catalogue Raisonné; New Haven, London; Yale University Press; 2012; p. 268, cat. A-128.

Related files

- http://cartelfr.louvre.fr/cartelfr/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=25828 [accessed 14 July 2011, inv. 1461, with similar chimneypiece]
- http://cartelfr.louvre.fr/cartelfr/visite?srv=car_not_frame&idNotice=25828 [accessed 14 July 2011, inv. 1461, with similar chimneypiece]

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