Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/279

 ii GABRIEL METSU 255 PUPILS AND IMITATORS OF GABRIEL METSU Of Metsu's pupils in the ordinary sense nothing is known. The artist who stands nearest to him, and whose few works are often mistaken for Metsu's, is : JOOST VAN GEEL (1631-98), a Rotterdam merchant possessed of talent that is highly remarkable in an amateur. His best work is " The Mother with Nurse and Child," in the museum of his native town. It long passed for a picture of Metsu's. It surpasses his work in strength of colouring, although as a rule Van Geel's colour is paler than that of Metsu's. Almost parallel with Metsu is : JACOBUS OCHTERVELT (born about 1635, dead before 1700), also a Rotterdam painter. According to Houbraken, he was a fellow-pupil of Pieter de Hooch under Berchem. In his liking for vistas he reminds one of De Hooch ; but his style of painting and his colour-scheme, especially in his smaller and earlier pictures, have many points of resemblance to the work of Metsu. The same may be said in a less degree of JOHANNES VERKOLJE (1650-93), who obviously imitates now Metsu, now Ter Borch, now Caspar Netscher, without ever equalling either of these painters. EGLON HENDRICK. VAN DER NEER (about 1635-1703) attains as little success. A metallic smoothness and hardness distinguish him from his master, although he often tries slavishly to imitate Metsu. Compare, for example, his "Woman playing the Lute," at Dresden, with the famous original by Metsu at Kassel (146). Finally, it is to be noted that DANIEL VERT ANGEN (1598 to after 1659), who usually tries in his Arcadian landscapes with nude nymphs and the like to imitate Cornelius Poelenburg most carefully, appears in a small number of his pictures as a superficial and clumsy Metsu. Pictures of vegetable markets in this style by Vertangen are preserved in the castles of Fredensborg, near Copenhagen, and of Meiningen. An interior, which bore the genuine signature of Vertangen a short time ago when it was at an Amsterdam dealer's, now hangs in a private gallery in Buda-Pest, bearing the full signature of Gabriel Metsu.