Gerrit Dou (Leiden 1613 - Leiden 1675)

Jan Jansz Orlers, the Leiden town chronicler, states that Gerrit Dou was born in the city on 7 April 1613. His father, Douwe Jansz de Vries van Arentsveld, owned the second largest glassworks in Leiden, which he had taken over from the first husband of his wife Maria (Marijtgen) Jansdr van Rosenburg. According to Orlers, Dou studied drawing for 18 months with the Leiden engraver Bartholomeus Dolendo, before spending two years learning his father’s trade from the local glazier Pieter Couwenhorn. In 1625 and 1627 he and his brother Jan registered with the glaziers’ guild. However, Dou then switched to painting, and on 14 February 1628 he entered Rembrandt’s studio to begin a three-year apprenticeship. He became an independent master in Leiden around 1631 and made his name with an oeuvre comprising tronies, portraits, self-portraits, genre scenes and a few still lifes. He joined the local Guild of St Luke in 1648 as an ensign, a rank within the civic guard that was reserved for bachelors. Records show that he paid his annual dues to the guild in 1649-51, 1658-68 and 1673-74. Dou was buried in the Pieterskerk in Leiden in the week of 9-15 February 1675.

In 1642, in his address to the artists of Leiden, Philips Angel singled out Dou, ‘for whom no praise is sufficient’, as an exemplary painter. Other contemporary writers laud his astonishing illusionism and speak of his meticulous and time-consuming manner of working. Dou had a few very good customers, and his pictures found their way into collections in Leiden and elsewhere. Pieter Spiering, an ambassador for Sweden, paid him 500 guilders a year for first refusal of all his works. He bought several for Queen Christina of Sweden, although she returned 11 of them in 1652. In May 1660 Dou was commissioned to make three paintings as part of the gift from the States of Holland to King Charles II to congratulate him on regaining the crown of England. Dou was also responsible for putting that ‘Dutch Gift’ together, and may have been invited to paint at the English court. Another important patron was Johan de Bye of Leiden, who exhibited no fewer than 29 works by Dou in 1665-66. The Leiden professor François de le Boë Silvius left at least 11 pictures by Dou on his death. The wealth he gained from his art can be gauged from Von Sandrart’s remark that people were prepared to pay 600 to 1,000 guilders or more for a painting. Dou’s international clientele included Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and Cosimo III de’ Medici, who paid a visit to his studio in 1669 and commissioned a self-portrait. The Delft patrician Pieter Tedingh van Berckhout, the Danish scholar Ole Borch and the French diplomat Balthasar de Monconys also came calling.

Dou’s earliest known signed and dated work is An Interior with a Young Viola Player of 1637, but by then he had already been active for some years as an artist.¹¹Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery; illustrated in A.K. Wheelock Jr (ed.), Gerrit Dou 1613-1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2000-01, p. 79, no. 8. Among his latest dated pictures are The Grocer’s Shop²²England, Royal Collection; illustrated in A.K. Wheelock Jr (ed.), Gerrit Dou 1613-1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2000-01, p. 135, no. 35. and The Dentist,³³Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 594, no. 297. both of 1672. Dou was the founding father of the Leiden fijnschilders and influenced or taught many local painters. In the early 1640s they probably included Gabriel Metsu, Johan van Staveren, Abraham de Pape and Adriaen van Gaesbeeck. His most talented pupil in the early 1650s was Frans van Mieris, and he was followed in the 1660s by Gerrit Maes, Bartholomeus Maton, Matthijs Naiveu, Godefridus Schalcken, Pieter van Slingelandt and Domenicus van Tol. Carel de Moor (1655-1738) was one of Dou’s last apprentices.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2026

References
J.J. Orlers, Beschrijving der stad Leyden, Leiden 1641, pp. 377-80; P. Angel, Lof der Schilderkonst, Leiden 1642 – trans. M. Hoyle and annot. H. Miedema, ‘Philips Angel, Praise of Painting’, Simiolus 24 (1996), pp. 227-58, esp. pp. 238, 248-49; S. van Leeuwen, Korte besgryving van het Lugdunum Batavorum, nu Leyden: Vervatende een verhaal van haar grond-stand, oudheid, opkomst, voort-gang, ende stads-bestier: Sampt het graven van den Ouden ende Niewen Rijn, met de oude ende niewe uytwateringen van de selve, Leiden 1672, p. 191; J. von Sandrart, Academie der Bau-, Bild- und Mahlerey-Künste von 1675: Leben der berühmten Maler, Bildhauer und Baumeister, ed. A.R. Peltzer, Munich 1925 (ed. princ. Nuremberg 1675), pp. 195-96; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, pp. 1-7; C. Kramm, De levens en werken der Hollandsche en Vlaamsche kunstschilders, beeldhouwers, graveurs en bouwmeesters: Van den vroegsten tot op onzen tijd, I, Amsterdam 1857, pp. 359-65; F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], V, Rotterdam 1882-83, pp. 178, 198, 259; A. Bredius, ‘Een en ander omtrent G. Dou’, in ibid., pp. 26-30; W. Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, diss., Leiden University 1901, pp. 17-83, 166-73 (documents); Martin in U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IX, Leipzig 1913, pp. 503-05; Sluijter in E.J. Sluijter, M. Enklaar and P. Nieuwenhuizen (eds.), Leidse fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630-1760, exh. cat. Leiden (Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) 1988, p. 96; R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, I, pp. 2-9; R. Baer, ‘The Life and Art of Gerrit Dou’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr (ed.), Gerrit Dou 1613-1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/London (Dulwich Picture Gallery)/The Hague (Mauritshuis) 2000-01, pp. 26-52, esp. pp. 28-33; Beaujean in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXIX, Munich/Leipzig 2001, pp. 176-80