Woman Reading a Letter

Metsu painted this woman reading a letter in the mid-1660s, in Amsterdam. He was in his mid-thirties, one of the leading genre painters in the city, and he was producing the domestic interiors that would make him, after his death, one of the most expensive painters of the 18th century. A young woman stands in a room, holding an open letter in both hands. She is reading, her eyes lowered, her lips slightly parted. She wears a yellow jacket trimmed with fur and a blue skirt. A maid stands behind her at the left, holding a pair of spectacles. On the table at the right, a jewel box, a pearl necklace, and a mirror. Through the window at the left, a view of Amsterdam rooftops. The room is quiet, the light soft, the woman completely absorbed in the letter. Metsu was born in Leiden in 1629, the son of a painter. He moved to Amsterdam in the early 1650s, where he became a friend and rival of Vermeer. The two painters influenced each other heavily: Metsu adopted Vermeer's quiet domestic subjects and his careful handling of light, while Vermeer may have adopted some of Metsu's compositional devices. Metsu's letter-reading scenes are among the finest Dutch genre paintings of the period, comparable to Vermeer's own Woman Reading a Letter, which hangs in the Rijksmuseum. The painting is about the act of reading. The letter is the center of the composition, held at the woman's chest, the focal point of the light from the window. We cannot read the letter, but the jewel box and the pearl necklace on the table suggest that it may be from a lover. The maid with the spectacles may be bringing them so the woman can read more closely, or she may have just delivered the letter itself. Oil on canvas, 74 by 65 centimeters, roughly 29 by 25 inches. Metsu painted with a smooth, controlled surface, building the yellow jacket in thin layers of warm color over a light ground. The fur trim is rendered with tiny strokes of white and grey, each hair individually painted. The letter is a small white rectangle, its text illegible, its surface catching the light from the window. The nearly square format and warm subject make this print work well in a bedroom, study, or hallway. The domestic subject and soft light suit a room with warm-toned walls. A white or natural wood frame picks up the painting's warm palette. The 12x16 or 16x20 size gives the letter and the yellow jacket enough detail to appreciate up close. The painting is in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin. 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.