A Lady at Her Toilet

A lady attends to her appearance in this 1660 painting at The Frick Collection in New York, one of the most celebrated private museums in America. Toilet scenes—women dressing, arranging their hair, or applying cosmetics—were standard subjects in Dutch genre painting, their combination of intimacy, beauty, and implied vanity providing rich material for painters and viewers alike. The Frick"s collection of Dutch paintings is among the finest in private American hands.

The toilet scene provides opportunities for rendering the varied objects of female grooming—mirror, jewels, combs, cosmetics—alongside the textures of the woman"s rich clothing and bare skin. Metsu renders these diverse surfaces with his mature, luminous technique. The palette is warm and bright, with the woman"s costume and the grooming accessories providing varied color accents within the interior setting.