"The Poulterer's Shop" at our
National Gallery is a perfect example of his fastidious minuteness
and charm. But he painted pictures also with a tenderer brush. I give
on the opposite page a reproduction of the most charming picture by
Gerard Dou that I know--"The Young Housekeeper" at The Hague. This
is a very miracle of painting in every inch, and yet the pains that
have been expended upon the cabbage and the fish are not for a moment
disproportionate: the cabbage and the fish, for all their finish,
remain subordinate and appropriate details. The picture is the picture
of the mother and the children. "The Night School"--No. 795 in the
Ryks Museum at Amsterdam--is, I believe, more generally admired, but
"The Young Housekeeper" is the better. "The Night School" might be
described as the work of a pocket Rembrandt; "The Young Housekeeper"
is the work of an artist of rare individuality and sympathy. At the
Wallace Collection may be seen a hermit by Dou quite in his best
nocturnal manner.
Gerard Dou died at Leyden, where he had spent nearly all his quiet
life, in 1676. He is buried at St. Peter's, but his grave does not
seem to be known there.
Dou had many imitators, some of whom studied under him. One of the
chief was Godfried Schalcken of Dort, whose picture of an "Old Woman
Scouring a Pan" may be seen in the National Gallery, while the Wallace
Collection has several examples of his skill.
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