Forget Vermeer—Try on Metsu

By Blake Gopnik
With every year and decade that goes by, we seem to fall more deeply in love with Johannes Vermeer. Which means we move further and further from Gabriel Metsu, a colleague and rival of Vermeer’s who, from well before his death in 1667 right into the later 19th century, was by far the more famous, better loved artist. With luck – a lot of luck, granted – a new Metsu show at the National Gallery of Art may restore him to favor. It reveals an artist who had storytelling skills not seen in Vermeer, who varied his brushwork as Vermeer never did and who had an uncanny knack for piling detail on detail. Vermeer is the more modern of the pair, by far, and so is bound to speak to us more directly. But maybe Metsu gives us a better chance to view the world through another era’s eyes. The gallery that follows lets Metsu speak for himself.