GABRIEL, a celebrated Dutch painter, was born at Leyden in 1615. His life seems to have been spent in the unrewarded prosecution of his art, and to have been chequered by no more striking events than the successive publications of his numerous pictures. There are indications in his works of a close study of Terburg, Gerard Dou, and Francis Meris. In the latter part of his life he caught some of the vivacity in execution of his convivial and talented friend Jan Steen. Metzu is generally represented to have died at Amsterdam in 1658; yet some of his well-authenticated pictures bear the dates 1661 and 1667. As a mere imitator of nature, Gabriel Metzu was unsurpassed. His paintings are harmonious combinations of the various qualities of correct design, delicate pencilling, rich and harmonious colouring, and masterly perspective. Conversation-pieces were his favourite subjects. His pictures of sick or fainting ladies, musical parties, letter-writers, morning visits of fashionable gallants, and other scenes in genteel life, are executed with the most refined taste. The same delicate sense of propriety preserves him from all coarseness when he represents a fish-market, a maid-servant sitting in a kitchen with a tabby cat beside her, or a cavalier drinking his beer and smoking his pipe at a cabaret. Very high prices have been given for some of the pictures of Metzu. Some of the most valuable are found in the Louvre, and in the galleries of Berlin, Dresden, and the Hermitage of St Petersburg.