Support The panel consists of two vertically grained oak planks. The original plank, approx. 22.9 x 17.3 cm, was enlarged at a later date by setting it into a bigger one, covering the reverse and edges and creating the current format. Dendrochronology of the added plank has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1693. The plank could have been ready for use by 1702, but a date in or after 1712 is more likely.
Preparatory layers A light ground covers the central section. Due to the enlargement, no samples could be taken for further analysis.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye, infrared photography or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The composition was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, using reserves, for instance for the spindle. Infrared photography showed dark contours, probably part of an initial sketch, in what appears to be a liquid medium, for example around the hat. A fluid, brown undermodelling is evident in some of the shadows of the folds of the sleeves. A large expanse of liquid, blue underpainting was left uncovered, forming the shaded skirt. The face was fully modelled in light colours, wet in wet, with restricted glazing in the shadows and without visible undermodelling. Fine hatching, executed with a very thin brush, can be found in the shadows of the lit cuff, the back of the hand and the illuminated jawline. The texture of the bodice is also finely detailed. The composition appears carefully planned and no changes were detected. The architectural elements around the window frame, including the plinth with the Roman numerals, were painted on the enlargement and are of a later date.
Gwen Tauber, 2015

Fair. Alligator cracks are present in the dark brown paint, most disturbingly in the background at the top. There is abrasion in the blacks and in the brown shadows of the face.

…; ? collection Gottfried Winckler (1731-1795), Leipzig, 1768 (‘Halbe Fig. auf Holz. 9½ Zoll hoch, 7½ Zoll breit [22.4 x 17.7 cm]. Eine Bäuerin met zugespitztem Hute, wickelt Garn, und sieht aus einem Fenster, das oben gerundet ist. In der Linken hält sie die Weife und in der Rechten die Spindel met der Rolle. Ihre augen sind von der Arbeit abgewandt, und scheinen zur Rechten einen Vorübergehenden zu verfolgen. Dieses ist die fleissige Hausfrau welche vom Herrn Bause in Kupfer ausgeht.’);¹¹F.W. Kreuchauf, Historische Erklärungen der Gemälde, welche Herr Gottfried Winkler in Leipzig gesammlet, coll. cat. Leipzig 1768, p. 127, no. 139; transcribed in G.W. Schulz, ‘Gottfried Winckler und seine Sammlungen’, in W. Teupser (ed.), Kunst und ihre Sammlung in Leipzig: Festschrift zum 100jährigen Jubiläum des Leipziger Kunstvereins und Museums der bildenden Künste, Leipzig 1937, pp. 63-102, esp. p. 97. Around 1800 Christian Friedrich Wiegand made a series of watercolours of the walls of Winckler’s cabinet, in one of which this painting can be seen; Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig. With thanks to Jan Nicolaisen for drawing my attention to this watercolour. C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, I, Esslingen/Paris 1907, p. 394, no. 159, reports that the picture was auctioned for fr. 3,780 in sale, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Bénévent (1754-1838, Paris), Paris (C.P. Henry et al.), 9 July 1817, but it has not been located in the sale catalogue.…; sale, David Teixeira Jr (†, The Hague), The Hague (H.D. Loeff et al.), 23 July 1832, no. 17 (‘hoog 3 p. 1 d., breed 2 p. 2 d. [31 x 22 cm] Paneel. Dit uitmuntend Kabinetstukje stelt voor, eene oude Vrouw, ziende uit eene nis, welke omgeven is door een portiek, op welks voetstuk het jaartal 1653 te lezen is. Zij is gekleed in een geelachtig jakje, waarover een met bont gevoerd overkleedje; haar hoofd is met eene muts en een bruine hoed gedekt; zij heeft een garenhaspel in de eene, en een klos in de andere hand; achter haar ziet men in een vertrek op een schoorsteen en venster [...]’), fl. 2,600, to the dealer A. Brondgeest, for Sir Charles Bagot (1718-1843), London;²²Copy RKD; Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), pp. 17, 30, no. 151. his sale, London (Christie’s), 18 June 1836, no. 49 (‘Gerard Dou, 1653, ‘An Old Woman at an arched window, holding in her hand a reel for winding thread’), 196 gns (fl. 2,469.60), to Adriaan van der Hoop (1778-1854), Amsterdam, through the mediation of the dealer A. Brondgeest;³³Copy RKD; Lijst van schilderijen, beelden en teekeningen van Adriaan van der Hoop te Amsterdam, NHA, ARS, no. 388 (copy in Rijksmuseum Research Library), pp. 17, 30, no. 151: ‘Een klijn, maar zeer uitvoerig en fijn Schilderij door G: Dou. insgelijk op voorenstaande verkoping gekocht zynde nº - 49 - voor £205.16. bedragende als hierboven…2680. (zie verder Pagª: 30.) Nota ad Nº 151. Sir Charles Bagot, Gezant van Groot Brittanië in ’s Hage zynde, had dit Schildery gekocht op de Veiling van de verzameling van den Ouden Heer Teixeira.’ Brondgeest bought the painting on a trip to England in the summer of 1836, together with SK-C-89, SK-C-97 and SK-C-230, which were also acquired by Van der Hoop. by whom bequeathed to the City of Amsterdam, with 223 other paintings, 1854;⁴⁴Taxatie 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. 2, no. 151: ‘G. Dou. Eene Nis met eene oude vrouw met Haspel in de hand fl. 3000’. on loan from the City of Amsterdam to the museum since 30 June 1885⁵⁵For the reconstruction of the provenance see 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. 146, no. 44.

Object number: SK-C-127

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

Gerrit Dou’s Woman Holding a Spool and Spindle at a Window is signed and dated 1653 on the window ledge immediately below the spool in the woman’s left hand. It is a fragment of an initially larger scene, which was cut down and then let into a bigger panel painted with a classicist window opening with pilasters and, at the bottom, a plinth with the date 1653 prominently repeated in Roman numerals.⁹⁹This modification has not been removed, as stated 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. 146, no. 44, but is now covered by the framework. There is an unsigned copy that probably gives an idea of Dou’s original composition before it was trimmed.¹⁰¹⁰Mentioned in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 533, no. 281. At the bottom there is a relief by François du Quesnoy, which Dou included in several paintings, and a flowerpot. The copy measures 34.3 x 24.7 centimetres, which is roughly the size of the panel from which the Rijksmuseum fragment must have been sawn. The X-radiograph and the infrared images of the present picture do not reveal any trace of the top of the plant at the bottom left in the copy, so it is not certain that the scenes were the same.

The painting was probably identical with a work described in the 1768 catalogue of the famous collection of Gottfried Winckler in Leipzig.¹¹¹¹See Provenance. It must have been cut down before 1766, because the German copper engraver Johann Friedrich Bause made a reproductive print entitled Die fleissige Hausfrau (The Diligent Housewife) in that year, which shows the picture in its reduced format (fig. a).¹²¹²F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, V, Amsterdam 1951, p. 268, no. 9. Bause’s engraving is mentioned in the 1805 catalogue of prints in the Winckler collection; see M. Huber and J.G. Stimmel, Catalogue raisonné du cabinet d’estampes de feu Mr. Winckler à Leipzig, III-1, Leipzig/Paris 1805, p. 249, no. 1203. A painted copy of the reduced original, which, at 23.1 x 17.7 cm, is almost the same size as the Rijksmuseum fragment (22.9 x 17.3 cm, see Technical notes), was in sale, London (Sotheby’s), 2 November 2000, no. 399. It is clear from the different background in this weak copy that this was not the picture in Winckler’s collection. The latest known source showing it without its addition is in a series of watercolours of the hanging of the paintings on the walls of the Winckler collection made around 1800 by Christian Friedrich Wiegand.¹³¹³Stadtgeschichtliches Museum Leipzig. With thanks to Jan Nicolaisen for the reference to this watercolour. In 1832 the picture was sold at the David Teixeira auction in a larger size (approx. 31 x 22 cm),¹⁴¹⁴See Provenance. so it must have been given its classicist framework at some point in the early nineteenth century.¹⁵¹⁵See Provenance. See Technical notes for the dendrochronological findings that point to a date after 1712. People were probably unaware that the alteration introduced something unprecedented into Dou’s oeuvre: the use of Roman numerals to date a work.¹⁶¹⁶Sluijter 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. 105, alludes to this, but treats the date as an original part of the painting. Frans van Mieris, however, employed them in his 1663 Boy Blowing Bubbles,¹⁷¹⁷The Hague, Mauritshuis; illustrated in O. Naumann, Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681), I, Doornspijk 1981, pl. 58. and one of the many copies after that famous niche painting was a print of 1760 by the French artist Nicolas Ponce, of which Winckler owned an impression in 1805.¹⁸¹⁸M. Huber and J.G. Stimmel, Catalogue raisonné du cabinet d’estampes de feu Mr. Winckler à Leipzig, III-1, Leipzig/Paris 1805, p. 593, no. 3293. F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts ca. 1450-1700, XIV, Amsterdam 1956, p. 46, no. 51. It is possible that Van Mieris’s picture served as the model for the modification to the Dou.

The 1653 fragment is one of the earliest scenes set in a niche from the 1650s and ’60s in which Dou depicted an elderly woman in a window.¹⁹¹⁹W. Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, diss., Leiden University 1901, p. 52. For several other examples see 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. 114, 115. Unlike a version in St Petersburg, where she is spooling yarn,²⁰²⁰The State Hermitage Museum; illustrated in W. Martin, Gerard Dou: Des Meisters Gemälde in 247 Abbildunge, Stuttgart/Berlin 1913, p. 103. the figure here is passive. Her implement is an attribute that merely alludes to spinning. The spool on which yarn is wound and the spindle for twisting fibres into yarn represent the final stages in the spinning process. The Rijksmuseum’s collection catalogues describe her as a fisherwoman because of her clothing, but several other genre pieces show that Dou used this attire for all kinds of working people.²¹²¹Sluijter in Leiden 1988, p. 103. See, for example, The Pancake Seller in Florence, Gallerie degli Uffizi, and The Vegetable and Herring Seller in Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek; illustrated in Martin 1913, pp. 136, 137.

Sluijter has suggested that the objects may give the picture an obscene connotation, whereas De Vries’s interpretation stresses the exemplary piety and industriousness of older women of this kind as they wind or twist yarn.²²²²Sluijter 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. 105; T. de Vries, Rembrandt: Meester tussen licht en donker, Utrecht 2005, pp. 234-36. If the painting originally had a Du Quesnoy relief at the bottom, as in the aforementioned unsigned copy, it would have been one of the earliest to do so. It was a motif that Dou repeated time and again between 1653 and 1671.²³²³Two works that are also from 1653 are The Violin Player in Vaduz-Vienna, Liechtenstein –The Princely Collections (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. 105) and The Doctor, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum (illustrated in ibid., p. 139). Lammertse in J. Giltaij (ed.), Zinnen en minnen: Schilders van het dagelijks leven in de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Frankfurt (Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie) 2004-05, p. 145, note 14, states that the date of The Violin Player may be 1651. Hecht has demonstrated that Dou was commenting on the paragone discussion in these works, showing the various ways in which painting is superior to other art forms.²⁴²⁴P. Hecht, ‘Art Beats Nature, and Painting Does so Best of All: The Paragone Competition in Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken’, Simiolus 29 (2002), pp. 184-201. It is possible that that is how the Rijksmuseum Woman Holding a Spool and Spindle at a Window was meant to be interpreted in its original size, with Dou demonstrating the superiority of painting by depicting almost transparent threads – something that no sculptor could ever have done.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2026

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, IX, London 1842, p. 8, no. 221; W. Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, diss., Leiden University 1901, p. 217, no. 229; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, I, Esslingen/Paris 1907, p. 394, no. 159; 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, pp. 103-05, no. 11; R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, pp. 64.1-64.3, no. 64

1885, p. 92, no. 40; 1887, p. 36, no. 281; 1903, p. 84, no. 793; 1934, p. 84, no. 793; 1976, p. 197, no. C 127

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2026, 'Gerrit Dou, A Woman Holding a Spool and Spindle at a Window, 1653', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20027800