An Old Woman Cooking Pancakes

An Old Woman Cooking Pancakes (1659) belongs to a type that Dutch Golden Age painters — especially Jan Steen and Adriaen van Ostade — had made thoroughly familiar: the old woman at a cooking fire, her face ruddy with heat, turning pancakes on a pan. Metsu's contribution was to bring his characteristic refinement to a subject that in other hands often veered toward the grotesque. The pancake-cooking type carried associations both with homely domestic virtue and with a slightly boisterous popular culture — pancakes were festival food, associated with Shrove Tuesday celebrations and the raucous domestic comedy Jan Steen specialized in. Metsu's version on panel presumably finds a middle register between comedy and dignity, consistent with his consistent tendency to observe without caricature.

Oil on panel with the challenge of depicting firelight — the warm orange glow of a cooking fire on an old woman's face was a demanding tonal problem that Metsu handles with graduated warmth contrasting with cooler surrounding tones.