Rating and value of works, drawings, paintings by Gabriel Metsu

If you own a work by or after the artist Gabriel Metsu, and would like to know its value, our state-approved experts and auctioneers will offer you their appraisal services. Our specialists will carry out a free appraisal of your work, and provide you with a precise estimate of its current market value. Then, if you wish to sell your work, we will guide you towards the best possible arrangement to obtain the optimum price.

Rating and value of the artist Gabriel Metsu

Gabriel Metsu was a Dutch painter highly recognized by his contemporaries in the 17th century. A leading figure of the "Golden Century", relatively few works attributed to him are to be found on the art market, but they are highly prized and well priced. Most of his work is in painting, but a few watercolor drawings have also survived. Works by Gabriel Metsu fetch between €500 and €1,407,524. A genre scene depicting a woman pouring beer for a young man smoking in a tavern sold for 884 350€ in 2007.

Order of value from a simple work to the most prestigious

The artist's style and technique

In the early 1650s, in keeping with the Calvinist reform in the United Provinces, Gabriel Metsu abandoned religious scenes to devote himself to genre painting, which was far more attractive to commissioners. His commissions were smaller, often for bourgeois interiors. He devoted himself in particular to exploring the daily life of the Dutch bourgeoisie, and captured the lives of his patrons with great acuity. Early on, Metsu followed in the footsteps of Rembrandt and other Baroque artists, borrowing from them the " chiaroscuro " initiated by Caravaggio, but he soon turned his attention to the masters of genre painting.

Hence, his later works are not unlike the compositions of Gérard Dou, one of the so-called " painters à la manière fine ", with the recurring motif of the window over-framing the scene. He is also influenced by other artists from the Delft or Amsterdam home, such as Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch : he often takes women as his theme, as well as his Apollonian pastimes such as music or reading.

The life of Gabriel Metsu 

Born in Leiden, Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) was the son of a Flemish upholsterer and painter and is said to have apprenticed in the studio of the distinguished Gérard Dou, genre painter and pioneer of the Leiden school. Metsu's talent was soon noticed in the United Provinces and, in 1648, he became one of the first and youngest members of the Guild of Saint-Luc, an institution bringing together sculptors and painters in Leiden. In 1650, he seems to have left Leiden for Utrecht, home to a colossal Caravaggesque scene. He then worked with a painter specializing in religious and genre scenes.

Gabriel Metsu left for Amsterdam for good in 1654, at which point he turned his attention to genre scenes. Nevertheless, he slipped out of the grip of the " painters à la manière fine " movement, whose main characteristic was to paint modest-sized compositions with remarkable meticulousness as regards the extremely faithful representation of detail.

Gabriel Metsu's imprint on his era

Metsu achieved such renown between the 18th and 19th centuries that some experts inadvertently attributed to him works by Vermeer, who fell into oblivion during this period and was only rediscovered in the second half of the 19th century by Théophile Thoré. Like Vermeer, Gabriel Metsu is renowned for the calm, soothing, poetic atmosphere of his genre scenes, which he renders with an exceptional mastery of light and chromatic contrasts. Gabriel Metsu died relatively young, at the age of thirty-eight, and his brief career left him time to train only one now-known disciple. He remains an important figure in the old paintings of the Northern Schools.

Recognizing the artist's signature

Gabriel Metsu signs his canvases with his full name or monogram (M.G) and sometimes dates his canvases. 

Knowing the value of a work

If you happen to own a work by Gabriel Metsu, request a free appraisal without delay via our form on our website. A member of our team of experts and auctioneers will contact you promptly to provide you with an estimate of the value of your work, as well as any relevant information about it. If you're thinking of selling your work, our specialists will also be on hand to provide you with alternatives for selling it at the best possible price.