Van Meiris, Metsu, and Netscher

Frans van Mieris, Garbriel Metsu, and Casper Netscher each receive a separate chapter in Melville’s copy of Gower’s The Figure Painters of Holland. Whereas Teniers the Younger and Adriaen van Ostade were each born in 1610, van Mieris, Metsu, and Netscher were each born two decades later. Gower declares that “the van Ostades, Jan Steens, and the Brauwers show us what may be called the vulgar side of Dutch seventeenth century life, while ter Borch, Netscher, Mieris, and Metsu take us into the dwellings of the rich and refined. With the latter we see the inner lives of the fair damsels and their admirers, all in rich and rare costumes, rustling in satins and brocades” (57). Van Mieris, Metzu, Netscher, and Gerard ter Borch had all been strongly influenced by the highly finished style that Gerard Dou (b. 1613) had developed while painting portraits of wealthy patrons in Leiden. They became known as the finjschilders, the “fine painters” who were highly popular in the mid-17th century, who had fallen out of favor by the time Melville was collecting prints the late 19th century, and who began to receive new appreciation in the late 20th century.

Gerard Dou (Melville's Gerard Douw, also known as Gerrit) was a student of Rembrandt. He is also the primary spokesman for the Dutch finjschilders in Melville’s “At the Hostelry.” No engravings after Dou are known to have survived from Melville’s personal print collection, but Melville did have access to several excellent engravings after Dou in his copy of The Works of Eminent Masters (The Tooth-Drawer, Portrait of Gerard Douw’s Mother, and The Dropsical Woman, 1: 192, 264, 265). Melville also had personal access to a Dou self-portrait in the frontispiece to his copy of Gower’s The Figure Painters of Holland (fig. 1). The engravings in Gower’s relatively small 1880 book are not nearly as spacious as those in Melville’s capacious two-volume edition of the 1854 Works, but this frontispiece does show Dou’s personal proclivity for fancy costumes and poses, his conspicuous deployment of musical instruments and scores, and his use of a window niche as a framing device, in this case revealing the artist’s studio behind the featured figure.

CAT 205 before fig 1 gerard dou gower frontispiece 1880 London.jpg

Figure 1. Gerard Dou. From a Painting as Himself in the Dresden Gallery. Frontispiece in Melville’s copy of Gower’s The Figure Painters of Holland (New York: Scribner and Welford, 1880). Houghton Library, Harvard University (call number, Haithi)

Melville in “At the Hostelry” uses Gerard Douw and Jan Steen to articulate the kind of difference Gower posits between the “vulgar” and “refined” styles in Dutch domestic Old Master painting. Douw enters the conversation in section 5 after Van de Velde, dreamily recalling heroic sea battles of long ago, locates the pictorial picturesque in the moment he saw “morn’s rays slant ‘twixt the bones / Of the oaken Dunderberg broken up / Saw her ribbed shadow on the sand.” Douw, “twirling a glass in sprightly air” in response, counters with his own reverence for the “old oak in a kitchen-dresser / The same set out with Delf ware olden / And well scoured copper sauce-pans—golden.” Melville’s Steen, in his “fellowly” way, does declare that “All’s picturesque beneath the sun.” But he declares his own stylistic preference for “life, plain life,” the “life that’s wine and brine” that he shares with Teniers, Brouwer, and van Ostade, not the “satin-glossed and flossy-fine” aesthetic that van Mieris, Metsu, Netscher, and ter Borch (Turburg in Melville’s poem) had evolved from the example of Dou (NN BBO 158-59, 162).

As Melville well knew, Gower’s absolute distinction between the “vulgar” and “refined” styles of Dutch Old Master domestic painters was impossible to sustain. Van Mieris did eventually assimilate many elements of the refined finjschilder style from Dou, but he was also strongly influenced by the paintings of Ostade and the “mingled brew” of “Jan who kept the Leyden tavern” (162).

Works cited for van Mieris, Metzu, and Netscher:
Buvelot, Quentin, et. al. Frans van Mieris, 1635-1681. The Hague (Mauritshuis) and Washington, D. C. (National Gallery), 2005.

Dillingham, William B. Melville and his Circle: The Last Years. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996.
Explication des ouvrages de peinture et de sculpture de l'école moderne de France, exposés le 24 Avril 1818 dans le Musée royal du Luxembourg. Paris: P. Didot, 1818.

“Gabriel Metsu: No. XXIII in The Great Masters of Art.” Art Journal (London), 1853, 217-20.

Gallafassi, Pierre. “Rugs in Paintings of the Dutch Golden Age.” Part 5 in Salon de Tapis d’Orient, http://www.turkotek.com/old_masters/salon_5.html

Gower, Ronald Charles Sutherland. The Figure Painters of Holland. New York: Scribner and Welford, 1880 (Sealts 235).

Hand-book, No. 6. Part 1, Pictures by Old Masters in the Old Eastern Gallery, Y & Part 2, Loan Collections and Recent Gifts to the Museum in the Old Eastern Gallery, X. Metropolitan Museum of Art. November 1890 to April 1891.
Hand-book No. 10. Collection of Old Masters and Pictures of the English School in the New Eastern Gallery O. Metropolitan Museum of Art [May 1890].
Honig, Elizabeth Alice. “Desire and Domestic Economy.” The Art Bulletin 83 (June 2001): 294-315.

Jansen, G. “Netscher, Caspar.” Grove, 22: 914-15.

Laurent, Henry. Le Musée royal. Paris: P. Didot, 1818. 2v.

Naumann, Otto. Frans van Mieris (1635-1681) the Elder. Doornspijk, the Netherlands: Davaco. 1981. 2 v.

Norsworthy, Scott. “1888 Dinner at Delmonico’s” and “Delmonico’s, corner of 26th Street and Fifth Avenue.” Melvilliana, June 4 and 14, 2014, https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2014/06/delmonicos-corner-of-26th-street-and.html.

Robinson, Franklin W. Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667): A Study of His Place in Dutch Genre Painting of the Golden Age. New York: Abner Shram, 1974.

--------. “Lairesse, Gérard de.” Grove, __: 650-53.

Snoep, D. P. Gods, Saints, & Heroes: Dutch Painting in the Age of Rembrandt. Washington, D. C.: National Gallery of Art, 1980. 237-52.

Stone-Ferrier, Linda. “Gabriel Metsu Street-Vendors: Shopping for Values in the Dutch Neighborhood.” In Waiboer, 73-95.

Sluijter, Eric J. “(1) Frans van Mieris (i)” and “(2) William van Mieris.” Grove, 21: 486-90.

“The Writing Master.” The Art Journal (London), 1880, 356-57.

Waiboer, Adrieen, et. al. Gabriel Metsu. Dublin and New Haven: National Gallery of Ireland and Yale University Press, 2010.