Briefschreibender Mann

This young man in a black silk suit sits at a sunlit window, quill in hand, in the middle of writing. Metsu made him around 1665 as one half of a pair. Its companion shows a woman reading a letter, probably the very one being written here, so the two panels hold a quiet conversation across whatever wall they hang on. Metsu borrowed the idea of pairing a letter written with a letter read from an older Dutch painter, Gerard ter Borch. The woman's room in the other panel includes a small seascape with a ship at sea, which viewers have long read as a sign of a lover away on a voyage, the reason for the letters passing between them.