Usurer with a Tearful Woman

Gabriel Metsu (Dutch, 1629–1667)

1654

Medium/TechniqueOil on canvas

Dimensions74 x 67.3 cm (29 1/8 x 26 1/2 in.)

Credit LineSidney Bartlett Bequest

Accession number89.501

On View

Not on view

ClassificationsPaintings

Collections

Europe

Description

Metsu's small, elegantly painted pictures are rich in narrative detail. Here, an unhappy debtor pathetically holds up a legal document, pleading for leniency. Hovering over his coins and strongbox, the stern old usurer, or moneylender, appears unmoved. In a society that greatly valued thrift and the wise management of money, the painting may have been understood as a warning against the excesses of both borrower and lender.

InscriptionsCenter left, on paper: GMetsu (G and M joined)

ProvenanceApril 9, 1687, anonymous sale, Amsterdam, lot 29. 1801, member of the Elias family; May 11, 1801, Elias sale [see note 1], Amsterdam, lot 46, to Cornelis Buijs (b. 1746 - d. 1826). 1860, Daniël Hooft (d. by 1860); October 30, 1860, Hooft sale, Cornelis François Roos, Amsterdam, lot 4, sold to Roos. Auguste Stevens (d. by 1867); May 1-2, 1867, posthumous Auguste Stevens sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, lot 28, sold for 8400 fr., probably to Étienne Le Roy (b. 1808- d. 1878), Brussels [see note 2]. 1874, John W. Wilson, Paris; April 27-28, 1874, Wilson sale, Hotel Drouot, Paris, lot 61, sold for 40,000 fr. to Decamps [see note 3]. 1880, Paul Pavlovich Demidoff, 2nd Prince of San Donato (b. 1839 - d. 1885), Florence; March 15 - April 10, 1880, Demidoff sale, San Donato Palace, lot 1137, to Stanton Blake (b. 1837 - d. 1889), Boston; 1889, purchased under the will of Stanton Blake by the MFA. (Accession Date: December 24, 1889)

NOTES:
[1] In a letter to the MFA (August 26, 1996; in MFA curatorial file), Burton Fredericksen, Director, Getty Provenance Index, suggests that the painting was included in this sale. He identifies the consignor as a member of the Elias family, possibly Jacob Arnoudsz. Elias (b. 1728 - d. 1800) of Amsterdam, then recently deceased.

[2] Étienne Le Roy was the expert at the Stevens sale. That he had owned the painting is according to Louis Decamps, "Correspondance," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 33, pt. 2 (1873), p. 279.

[3] For the name of the buyer (very likely Louis Decamps), and for a transcription of the entry on the painting in the 1860 Hooft catalogue, see Adriaan E. Waiboer, "Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667): Life and Work" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2007), pp. 398-399, cat. no. A-14.