De jagersbuit

1657

A quarrel with a neighbour and a move beside the vegetable market

In 1657 he quarrelled with a neighbour (it was alleged that Metsu had left a brothel at six in the morning) and moved to a house on a canal-side where a daily vegetable market was held.

1657–1667 · Lugar de trabajo

Amsterdam

27 de abril de 1658

Married: Isabella de Wolff

early 1660s

Turns to the Leiden “fijnschilders”

At the onset of the 1660s he turned for inspiration to the art of the Leiden “fijnschilders” (“fine painters”), whose origin is traced to Dou: their paintings on wood or copper are marked by exceptional rendering of minute detail and a smooth, glowing surface. He was apparently responding to the market for Dou’s paintings, which Dou sold at exorbitant prices.

c. 1661

Wins the patronage of the cloth merchant Jan Hinlopen

He won the patronage of the Amsterdam cloth merchant Jan J. Hinlopen, one of his most important patrons, and painted his family more than once in a fashionable setting. Such works include the “Portrait of the Hinlopen Family” (Berlin) and “Visit to the Nursery” (Metropolitan Museum).

1662

Jan Vos’s poem on “Visit to the Nursery”

Jan Vos published a poem about this painting, which belonged to Jan Hinlopen: the scene is set in an imaginary room of unrealistically large proportions, and hung in the reception room of Hinlopen’s house it alluded to his powerful role in local politics.