An Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior

An Old Woman at Her Meal in an Interior (1657) finds Metsu depicting the humble domestic routine of an elderly woman eating alone — a subject far removed from the fashionable genre scenes for which he is best known. The Leiden Collection, which holds this work, has assembled one of the finest private collections of Dutch Golden Age painting with particular attention to the quiet dignity of ordinary subjects. For Metsu, who painted across the full social spectrum of Dutch life, the old woman eating alone carried the same observational interest as the young lady at her dressing table — the quality of attention, not the social status of the subject, determined the quality of the painting. The canvas dates from 1657, just before his move to Amsterdam, and may preserve something of Leiden's plainer, less fashion-conscious approach to genre painting.

Canvas with careful tonal modeling of the interior setting and the old woman's figure. Metsu handles aging skin, plain clothing, and simple meal objects with the same descriptive care he brings to fine fabrics and silverware — the painting's quiet democracy of attention is among its most striking qualities.