Support The single, vertically grained, quarter-sawn oak plank with an arched top is approx. 1.2 cm thick on the left and approx. 0.9 cm on the right. Wooden strips on the left and right (approx. 0.6 cm) were added at a later date. The reverse is slightly bevelled on all sides and has regularly spaced saw marks. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1675. The plank could have been ready for use by 1682, but a date in or after 1694 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The single, warm, orangey-beige ground extends up to the edges of the support. It contains numerous fine red pigment particles and an occasional large, yellow-orange pigment particle.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye, infrared photography or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The composition was laid in with a translucent dark brown sketch and carefully built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, using reserves. Opaque paints were applied to model forms, leaving the first lay-in partially exposed in the paint surface, for instance, in the shadows of the folds of the curtain on the right. The lightest areas were indicated with rather coarse paints which appear to contain little binding medium. Highlights, such as those in the weave of the curtain on the right, in the edging of the red skirt and the shoe, were executed with many detailed and carefully positioned dots and dabs of paint. Fine lines were scratched into the wet paint to suggest the gaps between the floorboards.
Gwen Tauber, 2010 / additions by Ige Verslype, 2019

Fair. Vertical stripes of lighter-coloured paint, probably the result of water damage, are especially evident in red areas and in the top right part of the curtain in the foreground. The damages, several of which have been retouched, are readily visible in the infrared images. There are small paint losses throughout. The varnish has yellowed and saturates poorly.

…; anonymous sale (‘un artiste’), Paris (A.J. Lebrun and L.-F.-J. Boileau), 22 January 1787 sqq., no. 55, as Van Tol (‘Un Tableau représentant un intérieur de chambre hollandoise où se voit une Femme qui alaitte son enfant. […] Hauteur 18 pouces, largeur 14 pouces.[48.6 x 37.8 cm] B[ois]’), fr. 210, to Jacques Langlier (1732-1814), Paris;¹¹GPI, F-A-888.…; ? sale, Révérend Père Keusters (†), Antwerp (P.N. Carpentiers), 13 August 1834 sqq., no. 52, as Van Tol (‘Toile haut 44, large 39 [cm]. La Nourrice’), Bfr. 4 (?);²²GPI, B-539.…; sale, Bon-Thomas Henry (1766-1836, Cherbourg), Paris (D.-E.-M. Moreau, J.-N. Lacoste and C. George), 23 May 1836, no. 80, as Van Tol (‘dans une chambre à coucher meublée d’un lit, d’une table, d’un tabouret et d’un berceau en osier, une mère assise sur un fauteuil présente le sein à son petit garçon qu’elle soutient de la main gauche; mais une jeune fille l’empêche de teter en lui faisant voir une fleur qu’il cherche à attraper. La maman sourit à ce jeu enfantin dont elle attend patiemment l’issue. Elle est vêtue d’un déshabillé bleu bordé de fourrure blanche, une jupe d’étoffe cramoisie relevée sur ses genoux laisse voir un jupon de dessous de couleur rouge. Un bonnet blanc tout uni couvre sa tête. Une Bible ouverte et un flambeau sont placés sur sa table. Un lustre de forme antique pend au plafond, du centre duquel descend une draperie rouge et bleue qui, relevée sur la droite, forme rideau. Dans le fond à gauche, on remarque dans la demi-teinte deux hommes s’entretenant près d’une croisée. [...] Bois forme cintrée. H. 18 p., larg. 13 p. 6 l. [48.6 x 36.5 cm]’), fr. 445, to the dealer John Smith, London;³³Copy RKD; C. Sebag-Montefiore and J.I. Armstrong-Totten, A Dynasty of Dealers: John Smith and Successors 1801-1914: A Study of the Art Market in Nineteenth-Century London, London 2013, p. 197. from whom, £40, to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, August 1837;⁴⁴Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 19, no. 35(b): ‘een fraai Schilderij van van Tol, zijnde een fraaije Kopy van het meesterstuk van G. Dou, thans in de Gallery van den Marquis van Westminster in Londen’. C. Sebag-Montefiore and J.I. Armstrong-Totten, A Dynasty of Dealers: John Smith and Successors 1801-1914: A Study of the Art Market in Nineteenth-Century London, London 2013, p. 243. by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, as Domenicus van Tol after Dou, with 223 other paintings, 1854;⁵⁵Taxatie van schilderijen, teekeningen en beeldhouwwerken gedaan door Pieter E.H. Praetorius en Gerrit de Vries Jz., executeuren van het testament van A. van der Hoop [...] 29 april 1854, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), p. 1, no. 35: ‘Huisselijk tafereel vrouw kinderen, fl. 450’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885⁶⁶Provenance from 1837 to the present reconstructed in A. Pollmer, ‘Catalogus van de schilderijen in de verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop’, in E. Bergvelt et al., De Hollandse meesters van een Amsterdamse bankier: De verzameling van Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), exh. cat. Amsterdam (Amsterdams Historisch Museum; Rijksmuseum) 2004-05, pp. 135-95, esp. p. 179.

Object number: SK-C-243

Credit line: On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop Bequest)

This is a faithful copy after Gerrit Dou’s painting of the same size in Berlin.¹⁰¹⁰Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie; illustrated in H. Bock et al. (eds.), Berlin, Gemäldegalerie: Gesamtverzeichnis, coll. cat. Berlin 1996, p. 42. The only obvious differences are the mother’s blue jacket, which is green in Dou’s model, and the less detailed background. In the original a woman with a doctor examining her urine is depicted there, but the copyist simplified that scene so radically that it is no longer recognizable.

It seems that the Rijksmuseum has always attributed Mother Giving her Child the Breast to Domenicus van Tol, although that has never been supported by any evidence, and was already being questioned by no less an authority than Théophile Thoré.¹¹¹¹‘Bonne peinture pour van Tol, si elle est de lui’ (Good painting for Van Tol, if it is by him); E.-J.-T. Thoré (pseud. W. Bürger), Musées de la Hollande, II, Paris 1860, p. 14. Dou was Van Tol’s uncle, and possibly his teacher as well. The brushwork does not appear to be Van Tol’s, which is characterized by more thickly applied paint with visible brushstrokes.¹²¹²See, for instance, SK-A-417 and SK-A-2341. Finally, the dendrochronology indicates that the plank came from a tree that could not have been felled before 1682,¹³¹³See Technical notes. several years after Van Tol’s death in 1676. Despite the picture’s commendable quality it is impossible to arrive at an attribution. In all likelihood the panel was not ready to be painted until 1694, and none of Dou’s pupils or followers active then would have been a suitable candidate, although the artist certainly seems to have been Dutch. It is not known where Dou’s original was at the time.¹⁴¹⁴For its provenance see R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, p. 77-1, no. 77. The present work is the only known copy after it, and is also a very early one, possibly even from the seventeenth century.

Eddy Schavemaker, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, I, Esslingen/Paris 1907, p. 377, under no. 112

1887, p. 169, no. 1436 (as Van Tol); 1903, p. 260 (not numbered; as Van Tol); 1976, p. 198, no. C 243 (as Van Tol)

Eddy Schavemaker, 2026, 'copy after Gerrit Dou, A Mother Giving her Child the Breast, in or after 1694', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20026423