Pijprokende man

Gerrit Dou, ca. 1650 - ca. 1655

Een jongeman kijkt ons vanuit een vensternis aan, terwijl hij een pijp rookt. Dou is een meester in het scheppen van illusies. Het opengeslagen boek lijkt vanuit het raam onze ruimte in te steken, en ook het groene gordijntje aan de koperen roede is zo realistisch geschilderd dat we bijna worden verleid het opzij te<BR />trekken. Maar toch, het schilderij is zo klein dat het daardoor zijn bedrog prijsgeeft.

  • Soort kunstwerkschilderij
  • ObjectnummerSK-A-86
  • Afmetingendrager: hoogte 48 cm (paneelmaat) x breedte 36,6 cm x breedte 37 cm, lijst: hoogte 64 cm x breedte 52,8 cm x dikte 6,5 cm
  • Fysieke kenmerkenolieverf op paneel

Ontdek verder

meer door Gerard Dou

Lezende oude vrouw

Gerard Dou, ca. 1631 - ca. 1632

Lezende oude vrouw

De avondschool

Gerard Dou, ca. 1660 - ca. 1665

De avondschool

Meisje met olielamp voor een venster

Gerard Dou, 1645 - 1675

Meisje met olielamp voor een venster

De dokter

kopie naar Gerard Dou, 1650 - 1669

De dokter

Een kluizenaar

Gerard Dou, 1664

Een kluizenaar

Portret van een echtpaar in een landschap

Gerard Dou, ca. 1635 - 1665

Portret van een echtpaar in een landschap

Gerrit Dou

c. 1650

Inscriptions

  • signature:GDou

The artist

Biography

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.1Edinburgh, 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 Shop2England, 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,3Staatliche 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, 2025

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

Entry

This painting is very probably the work described as a ‘tobacco smoker’ in the collection of the Delft regent Franco Reyers van Bleyswijk in 1734,4See Provenance. but for a long time after that it was referred to in the literature as one of the many self-portraits of Gerrit Dou. Several authors have rightly pointed out that the man does not look enough like the artist to justify that identification.5Compare, for example, Dou’s Self-Portrait of 1647 in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 571, no. 274. The identification is rejected in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1960, I, p. 103; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 530, no. 571; R.W. Hunnewell, Gerrit Dou’s Self Portraits and Depictions of the Artist, diss., Boston University Graduate School 1983, p. 99, and by others. 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. 98, suggests that the idealized type may well have been based on Dou’s own features. Among those who regard the painting as a self-portrait are W. Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, diss., Leiden University 1901, pp. 198-99, no. 104, and Brown in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School: 1600-1900, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1991, I, p. 106. Dou depicted this type of person, with long, reddish, curly hair, pointed moustache and goatee several times, including in his Portrait of a Man in London.6The National Gallery; illustrated in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School: 1600-1900, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1991, II, pl. 90. Although at first sight there do not appear to be any attributes associated with a painter, the figure can probably be identified as such from his cap and from the scene, hidden behind a raised curtain, of an easel, an old man and a youth grinding pigment.7This scene is more clearly visible in the reproductive print by Aert Schouman; see RP-P-1909-46. Baer 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. 94, regards the active figure in the background as a contrast with the main figure, who is in repose. Dou used the same background in his Violin Player of 1653 (or 1651),8Vaduz-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. 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 may be 1651. and there too it indicates that the figure should be regarded as a painter.

A Man Smoking a Pipe at a Window is dated in the literature between the mid-1630s and the first half of the 1650s.9G. Eckardt, Selbstbildnisse niederländischer Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1971, p. 177: c. 1635/40. Martin 1913, p. 15, and Baer 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. 94: c. 1645. R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, p. 44.1: 1645-50. E.J. Sluijter, De lof der schilderkunst: Over schilderijen van Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) en een traktaat van Philips Angel uit 1642, Hilversum 1993, p. 20, note 35: c. 1647. 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. 98: towards 1650. P. Hecht, De Hollandse fijnschilders: Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1989-90, p. 43: first half of the 1650s. Dendrochronology established that the panel was most likely only available around 1645.10See Technical notes. There is a formal relationship with Dou’s aforementioned Violin Player not only in the background scene but also in motifs such as the man’s clothing, the book with the curling pages and the marked emphasis on the trompe l’oeil effect of the extended hand. Although the execution is looser than in that work it probably dates from the same period.
As Hecht has demonstrated, The Violin Player shows that painting can imitate everything and can deceive the eye like no other art form, and that is also the central subject here.11P. 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, esp. p. 191. It is one of Dou’s earliest depictions of a figure in a niche, which later became a distinctive characteristic of his oeuvre.12See R.W. Hunnewell, Gerrit Dou’s Self Portraits and Depictions of the Artist, diss., Boston University Graduate School 1983, pp. 85-94, on the visual tradition of a figure in a niche or window. The brass rod from which the foreground curtain hangs is attached to a painted ebony frame. The latter element makes it clear that we are looking at a picture of a man in a niche who is smoking a clay pipe. It was a trick that Rembrandt had employed a little earlier in his Holy Family of 1646 in Kassel.13Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in E. van de Wetering et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, V: Small-Scale History Paintings, Dordrecht 2011, p. 389. This manipulation of the experience of space is heightened by the bold shadow cast on the window frame, by the book which seemingly extends casually towards the viewer and by the curling cartellino known from the trompe l’oeil tradition on which Dou’s signature can vaguely be made out.14It is stated in P.L. Dubourcq, Beschrijving der schilderijen op ’s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met fac simile der naamteekens, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1870, p. 224, that ‘Cude’s’ and another word can be read in the book. The text on the left page with the print has not been identified. It is evident from Dou’s not entirely accurate perspective and the way the light falls that he considered the effects to be more important than the proper rendering of space and lighting. He created a trompe l’oeil of a painting in which he demonstrated his mastery of spatial illusion.15On this see 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. 100; P. Hecht, De Hollandse fijnschilders: Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1989-90, p. 40; Baer 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. 94.

For an artist whose work revolves around the ‘almost real’ nature of painting, A Man Smoking a Pipe at a Window has almost programmatic subject matter.16P. 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, esp. pp. 195-96. The curtain hanging from the brass rod refers on the one hand to its use in protecting paintings from dust and sunlight and on the other to the famous classical anecdote about the artistic rivalry between Parrhasius and Zeuxis.17Pliny, Natural History, bk. 35, ch. 36. Dou’s picture is one of the earliest works to allude to that story, although it was probably preceded by Rembrandt’s 1646 Holy Family in Kassel.18For the relationship between the two works see 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. 100; A. Prater, ‘Rembrandts Stilleben’, Pantheon 54 (1996), pp. 62-76, esp. pp. 69-70; P. Hecht, De Hollandse fijnschilders: Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1989-90, pp. 43-44; R. Fucci, ‘Parrhasius and the Art of Display: The Illusionistic Curtain in 17th-Century Dutch Painting’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 65 (2015), pp. 144-75, esp. pp. 156-58. Falkenburg has suggested that Dou was not just referring to that ancient rivalry here, but that this painting is also a form of aemulatio – an attempt to surpass his predecessors.19R. Falkenburg, ‘Onweer bij Jan van Goyen: Artistieke wedijver en de markt voor het Hollandse landschap in de 17de eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 48 (1997), pp. 116-61, esp. pp. 144-45.

The extended hand holding the pipe is also a device for enhancing the spatial effect of the composition, while reinforcing the impression that the man is pondering something. Dou depicted a moment of reflection and contemplation during the artistic process, and the same can be seen in iconographically related paintings by Pieter Codde, Jan Davidsz de Heem, Jacob van Spreeuwen, Anthonie Palamedesz and Jan van Mieris.20On smoking and the contemplative attitude of those artists, see H.-J. Raupp, Untersuchungen zu Künstlerbildnis und Künstlerdarstellung in den Niederlanden im 17. Jahrhundert, diss., University of Heidelberg 1984, pp. 235-40; E.J. Sluijter, ‘Een zelfportret en “de schilder en zijn atelier”: Het aanzien van Jan van Mieris’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 8 (1989), pp. 287-307, esp. pp. 295-98; E. de Jongh, ‘Vluchtige rook vereeuwigd: Betekenissen van tabaksgebruik in zeventiende-eeuwse voorstellingen’, in B. Tempel (ed.), Rookgordijnen: Roken in de kunsten: Van olieverf tot celluloid, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Kunsthal) 2003-04, pp. 85-126, esp. pp. 121-25. By adding the book opened at a page with an illustration and text Dou indicates that the artist’s musings have an intellectual or artistic dimension.21See 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. 100, for a suggestion as to precisely what he was thinking about.

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2025

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Citation

(accessed 18 December 2025 11:51:12).

Footnotes

  • 1Edinburgh, 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.
  • 2England, 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.
  • 3Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 594, no. 297.
  • 4See Provenance.
  • 5Compare, for example, Dou’s Self-Portrait of 1647 in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 571, no. 274. The identification is rejected in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1960, I, p. 103; W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 530, no. 571; R.W. Hunnewell, Gerrit Dou’s Self Portraits and Depictions of the Artist, diss., Boston University Graduate School 1983, p. 99, and by others. 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. 98, suggests that the idealized type may well have been based on Dou’s own features. Among those who regard the painting as a self-portrait are W. Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, diss., Leiden University 1901, pp. 198-99, no. 104, and Brown in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School: 1600-1900, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1991, I, p. 106.
  • 6The National Gallery; illustrated in N. MacLaren, The Dutch School: 1600-1900, coll. cat. London (The National Gallery) 1991, II, pl. 90.
  • 7This scene is more clearly visible in the reproductive print by Aert Schouman; see RP-P-1909-46. Baer 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. 94, regards the active figure in the background as a contrast with the main figure, who is in repose.
  • 8Vaduz-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. 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 may be 1651.
  • 9G. Eckardt, Selbstbildnisse niederländischer Maler des 17. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 1971, p. 177: c. 1635/40. Martin 1913, p. 15, and Baer 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. 94: c. 1645. R. Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), diss., New York University 1990, II, p. 44.1: 1645-50. E.J. Sluijter, De lof der schilderkunst: Over schilderijen van Gerrit Dou (1613-1675) en een traktaat van Philips Angel uit 1642, Hilversum 1993, p. 20, note 35: c. 1647. 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. 98: towards 1650. P. Hecht, De Hollandse fijnschilders: Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1989-90, p. 43: first half of the 1650s.
  • 10See Technical notes.
  • 11P. 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, esp. p. 191.
  • 12See R.W. Hunnewell, Gerrit Dou’s Self Portraits and Depictions of the Artist, diss., Boston University Graduate School 1983, pp. 85-94, on the visual tradition of a figure in a niche or window.
  • 13Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister; illustrated in E. van de Wetering et al., A Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings, V: Small-Scale History Paintings, Dordrecht 2011, p. 389.
  • 14It is stated in P.L. Dubourcq, Beschrijving der schilderijen op ’s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam met fac simile der naamteekens, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1870, p. 224, that ‘Cude’s’ and another word can be read in the book. The text on the left page with the print has not been identified.
  • 15On this see 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. 100; P. Hecht, De Hollandse fijnschilders: Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1989-90, p. 40; Baer 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. 94.
  • 16P. 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, esp. pp. 195-96.
  • 17Pliny, Natural History, bk. 35, ch. 36.
  • 18For the relationship between the two works see 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. 100; A. Prater, ‘Rembrandts Stilleben’, Pantheon 54 (1996), pp. 62-76, esp. pp. 69-70; P. Hecht, De Hollandse fijnschilders: Van Gerard Dou tot Adriaen van der Werff, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 1989-90, pp. 43-44; R. Fucci, ‘Parrhasius and the Art of Display: The Illusionistic Curtain in 17th-Century Dutch Painting’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 65 (2015), pp. 144-75, esp. pp. 156-58.
  • 19R. Falkenburg, ‘Onweer bij Jan van Goyen: Artistieke wedijver en de markt voor het Hollandse landschap in de 17de eeuw’, Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 48 (1997), pp. 116-61, esp. pp. 144-45.
  • 20On smoking and the contemplative attitude of those artists, see H.-J. Raupp, Untersuchungen zu Künstlerbildnis und Künstlerdarstellung in den Niederlanden im 17. Jahrhundert, diss., University of Heidelberg 1984, pp. 235-40; E.J. Sluijter, ‘Een zelfportret en “de schilder en zijn atelier”: Het aanzien van Jan van Mieris’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 8 (1989), pp. 287-307, esp. pp. 295-98; E. de Jongh, ‘Vluchtige rook vereeuwigd: Betekenissen van tabaksgebruik in zeventiende-eeuwse voorstellingen’, in B. Tempel (ed.), Rookgordijnen: Roken in de kunsten: Van olieverf tot celluloid, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Kunsthal) 2003-04, pp. 85-126, esp. pp. 121-25.
  • 21See 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. 100, for a suggestion as to precisely what he was thinking about.