The Sick Child

Metsu painted this sick child in Amsterdam around 1660. He was about 31, one of the leading genre painters in the city, and he was producing the intimate domestic scenes that are his best work. He died seven years later at 38, cutting short a career that might have rivaled Vermeer's. A child sits in a woman's lap, its face pale and drawn. The woman, probably the mother, holds the child with one hand and rests her other hand on the child's forehead, feeling for fever. A small fire burns in a brazier at the lower right, and a piece of cloth hangs over a chair. The room is dark, with light falling from the upper left onto the child's face and the woman's hands. The child's eyes are half closed, and its body is limp against the woman's chest. The painting is one of the most tender of Dutch genre scenes. Metsu did not sentimentalize the subject: the child is genuinely sick, the mother is genuinely worried, and the painting conveys the quiet anxiety of caring for a sick child without drama or theatrical gesture. The small scale of the painting, about 32 by 27 centimeters, adds to its intimacy. It is a painting meant to be held and looked at closely. Metsu was born in Leiden in 1629, the son of a painter. He trained there and moved to Amsterdam in the early 1650s. He painted a wide range of subjects: interiors, market scenes, portraits, and still lifes. His best paintings are the small domestic scenes of women and children, painted with a warmth that distinguishes them from the more formal work of his contemporaries. He was a friend of Jan Steen and may have known Vermeer, though the evidence is thin. Oil on canvas, 32 by 27 centimeters, roughly 13 by 11 inches. Metsu painted on a small scale with a smooth, highly finished surface. The child's face is built in thin layers of pink and white, with the pallor of illness conveyed by cool tones in the shadows. The woman's hands are carefully rendered, with the fingers pressing gently against the child's forehead. The small vertical format and intimate subject make this print work well in a bedroom, study, or hallway. The quiet mood suits a room with warm, soft lighting. A white frame keeps the painting's dark palette from disappearing into the wall. The 8x10 or 11x14 size is appropriate for the painting's intimate scale. The painting is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.