Tabacco Smoker

Metsu’s early works are devoted mainly to mythological and biblical themes, but his move to Amsterdam brought a change to interiors and genre scenes. These showed elegant entertainment, musical companies and wealthy citizens such as the "Tobacco Smoker", lost in thought, leaning on a table as he draws on his clay pipe. The balanced composition, the colour accents and the treatment of the material quality of the objects are typical of Metsu’s style from the late 1650s onwards.
Smoking was extremely popular in 17th-century Holland; it was an inexpensive pleasure which could be freely pursued anywhere – in houses, shops, inns, in the street and in “smokers’ bars”. In Flemish and Dutch painting, depictions of smokers and smoking may also be linked with the sense of taste, in the “Five Senses” series.

Habersatter Thomas: Gabriel Metsu, Tabacco Smoker, in: Ducke Astrid, Habersatter Thomas (Hrsg./Edi.): von | from 0 auf | to 100. Residenzgalerie Salzburg 1923-2023. Salzburg 2023, S./p. 172-173