Joost van Geel: 4 interesting facts

Joost van Geel (1631, Rotterdam – 1698, Rotterdam), was a Dutch Golden Age genre painter in the style of Gabriel Metsu.

According to Houbraken, he was never competent to discover more virtually this painter than what he hypothetical from a painting of a lady with a nanny and child, which he described thus: “A piece has consent my attention signed V. Geel, which shows a nanny afterward a child on her lap, and a mommy standing at her side gone a red “sulp” jacket edged in white fur quite skillfully wrapped almost her, and a tawny satin skirt bearing in mind natural folds, playing subsequent to the child, as if she wanted to tempt her from her nanny past a accumulation of sugar. I don’t know if this performer was a pupil of Metzu, but the piece was as a result cleverly done in his spread that it could be taken for a deed by his hand. I have not seen any other pretense by this performer and whatever those of whom I ask of him have never heard of him or his work, which leads me to take that many brave souls are nipped in the bud from a nonappearance of patronage. This fragment today shows the “VGeel” signature taking into account the “L” connected to a (forged) “Metsu” signature.

According to the RKD he was a pupil of Metsu and worked in Leiden, Germany, France, London, and Rijnsburg previously returning to Rotterdam sometime after 1666. Van Geel’s painting of a lacemaker wearing a same red “sulp” jacket was recently discovered and broadcast on the Dutch antiques television program “Tussen Kunst en Kitsch” in 2011 and valued at re 250,000 euro.