Kitchenmaid Skewering Poultry

Gabriel Metsu painted this in the 1660s, during his Amsterdam period. It is one of his kitchen scenes, a subject he painted several times alongside his more famous letter-writing interiors. A young maid sits in a kitchen, threading a bird onto a skewer. She wears a white cap and a dark dress with a red apron. Her hands are busy with the bird, her face turned slightly toward the viewer. A dead chicken lies on the table beside her, along with a bowl and other kitchen implements. The background is dark, with a glimpse of a fireplace on the right. The light falls from the upper left, illuminating the maid's face and hands and the white of the poultry. Metsu was working in Amsterdam at the same time as Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch, all three painting domestic interiors with women as their primary subjects. Metsu's kitchen scenes are less serene than Vermeer's Milkmaid. There is more narrative action, more contact with the viewer. The maid looks out of the painting, acknowledging the viewer's presence, where Vermeer's milkmaid is absorbed in her task. The painting of food preparation was a common subject in Dutch genre painting, part of a broader interest in the material world of the household. These paintings were collected by wealthy burghers who wanted images of the domestic life that their wealth supported. The kitchen maid was a familiar figure, and the painting of her at work was both a celebration of domestic competence and a reminder of the labor behind the meal. Oil on canvas, roughly 36 by 27 centimeters. Metsu used careful, controlled brushwork, with the textures of the poultry feathers and the maid's apron rendered in fine detail. The dark background is typical of Metsu's kitchen scenes. This painting works well in a kitchen, dining room, or breakfast nook. The 11x14 framed version in a red oak frame complements the warm tones of the painting. The painting is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. This is a public domain artwork, sourced from the Rijksmuseum via Wikimedia Commons. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.