The Lace-Maker

In this genre scene, a woman sits by a window working on a lace pillow resting on her lap, while she looks straight out at the viewer. She wears a grey satin dress and a blue jacket trimmed with white fur, and at her feet on the left a cat watches her work. On the grey wall behind her hangs a painting that adds depth and suggests the domestic interior typical of Dutch Golden Age art. The picture is signed with the artist's full name at the top centre, and its long documented history, traceable to 1722 in the Saxon collections, makes it one of Metsu's works with the longest recorded provenance today. Bobbin lace, a craft demanding skill and concentration, serves here as a pretext for a calm portrait of everyday life. Metsu focuses on ordinary gestures, soft light and fabrics, within a restrained palette. Its appearance on a 1959 East German stamp shows how widely the image later circulated.

Painter

Gabriel Metsu

Date

1663

Medium

oil paint, canvas

Dimensions

35 × 26 cm

Museum

Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Dresden

Genre

genre art

Depicts

cat, lace pillow, lace maker, woman

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