The Fishwife

In July 1771 the collection of the late Amsterdam merchant Gerret Braamcamp went under the hammer, this canvas among them. Agents of Catherine the Great bought some of the finest lots and shipped them to Saint Petersburg on the Vrouw Maria, which sank off the coast of Finland that October. The fishwife went to an Amsterdam painter and dealer, Pieter Oets, and stayed on dry land. Van Ostade had painted her in 1672. She leans over her stall, knife in one hand and a fish in the other, looking straight out at us. The stall is cropped so closely that the viewer seems to stand inside it. On the board lie a crab, haddock and dab, and behind her hang a pair of scales above a halved salmon. The signature and date sit on the base of a stone column.