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拍品專文
A prolific and sought-after portrait painter of high society in his day, Michiel van Musscher is now chiefly remembered for his refined genre scenes. This charming street scene is one of his earliest works, painted only a few years after he concluded his training with the celebrated Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685) in 1667. The setting is the Eenhoornsluis (Unicorn Lock) in western Amsterdam, on the Korte Prinsengracht as seen from the north-east. This view, with the tower of the Westerkerk in the background, has remained largely unaltered through the centuries and is still recognisable today. It would have been a familiar site to the artist since he lived on the Vinkenstraat, just a three-minute walk away.
Van Musscher had not only trained with Ostade, but with a number of excellent masters, including the portrait specialist Abraham van den Tempel (1622/3-1672) and the genre painter Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667). Throughout his prolific career, Van Musscher had a keen eye for the potential of different styles and subjects practised by fellow artists, and easily adjusted his own style to new artistic fashions. This picture is a case in point and is particularly close to an early, more elaborate composition by Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693) of around 1659 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, similarly showing an outdoor market scene on a bridge. Metsu also painted such market scenes, his finest being one in the Louvre, Paris.
The individualised faces of the two protagonists in this painting leave little doubt that the artist based them on real women who he would have painted from life. Van Musscher often prepared his paintings with finely worked-out drawings. The old woman vegetable seller is the same woman ‘portrayed’ in van Musscher’s View of the Haarlemmerdijk in Amsterdam, of 1668, in the Amsterdam Museum (fig. 1). The present work is reminiscent of and similar in conception to Jan Steen’s so-called Burgomaster of Delft of 1655 in the Rijksmuseum. It shows Van Musscher expertly fusing genre and portrait.
Van Musscher had not only trained with Ostade, but with a number of excellent masters, including the portrait specialist Abraham van den Tempel (1622/3-1672) and the genre painter Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667). Throughout his prolific career, Van Musscher had a keen eye for the potential of different styles and subjects practised by fellow artists, and easily adjusted his own style to new artistic fashions. This picture is a case in point and is particularly close to an early, more elaborate composition by Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693) of around 1659 in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, similarly showing an outdoor market scene on a bridge. Metsu also painted such market scenes, his finest being one in the Louvre, Paris.
The individualised faces of the two protagonists in this painting leave little doubt that the artist based them on real women who he would have painted from life. Van Musscher often prepared his paintings with finely worked-out drawings. The old woman vegetable seller is the same woman ‘portrayed’ in van Musscher’s View of the Haarlemmerdijk in Amsterdam, of 1668, in the Amsterdam Museum (fig. 1). The present work is reminiscent of and similar in conception to Jan Steen’s so-called Burgomaster of Delft of 1655 in the Rijksmuseum. It shows Van Musscher expertly fusing genre and portrait.