GERRIT DOU
The Good Housekeeper
The Good Housekeeper presented to Charles II.—When Charles II. left Holland for his Restoration in England, the directors of the East India Company could think of no finer present to offer him than a picture by Gerrit Dou, which they bought for 4,000 florins from M. de Bie. It was this very picture of The Good Housekeeper, which was afterwards brought back to Holland by William III. and hung in his castle at Loo.
Dou's Style imitated by his Pupils.—It is by such pictures that we test the numerous works of his pupils, which are now, and have been from the end of the seventeenth century, offered for sale as Dou's. Very early in life Dou made use of magnifying glasses, and with great care he ground his own colors. Sandart relates that he once went with Pieter de Laer to pay a visit to Dou, who was painting a broomstick "which was slightly longer than a finger-nail." When Sandart praised his great industry, he answered that he "had to work about three days longer on it."
His Devotedness to his Work.—When the weather was not fine, he stopped his work. He devoted his whole life to work. His palette, colors, and brushes he carefully protected from dust, which gave him much trouble; he put them away with the utmost care, and when he sat down to paint he would wait a long time until the dust had entirely settled. His studio was a large one with high lights, facing the north and looking out on the still waters of the canal.
His Fondness for Domestic Subjects.—He almost always depicts a view of the interior of a burgher's dwelling. He is the painter of nice, quiet domesticity, and his people almost invariably look gay and happy. When he attempts to portray strong emotions, his people do not look as if they felt them; even his Dropsical Woman in the Louvre is dying peacefully and with resignation. Dou was an excellent observer of all surroundings, and the slightest objects in his pictures are represented with the utmost completeness. Dou could readily please, and form a school, in a Northern and Protestant country, where people lead an indoor life, a silent, concentrated family life, where man is attached to his dwelling, adorns it with care, and closes it in, with the feeling of a sanctuary. In fact, Dou painted only familiar subjects on canvases or panels of small size, such as are suited to the small cabinet of a curieux, and he was one of the first to set in honor the most recherché style of painting in Holland,—that of little pictures executed in that precious manner which the French of the eighteenth century called the beau fini.
Dou and Rembrandt contrasted.—Dou differed greatly from his master, Rembrandt. The one had the fire of genius; the other had patience. Even when Rembrandt highly finished his pictures, he knew when to neglect some accessory, to sacrifice some detail to the expression of the essential parts, and thus to give full value to everything in the picture that could appeal to the heart or interest the mind. Dou, on the contrary, applying himself to what he considered the last word of painting, tried to give equal importance to everything that entered into his composition, without admitting any of those negligences that are often such happy artifices, and taking as much care in the finish of a pewter pot as in expressing the feeling in a woman's features, or the thought in a man's physiognomy. Therefore, Dou's natural tendency, instead of being modified by Rembrandt, became only more pronounced. As his master broadened, his manner grew more smooth and polished.
The Fruit of Dou's Precautions.—His care in making his own brushes, colors, and varnishes, and his precautions to keep his wet canvases free from dust (he chose a studio overlooking stagnant water) have been rewarded by the present condition of admirable preservation of his pictures. His minuteness wearied his sitters and he soon failed as a portrait-painter. It is related that he made a distinguished Dutch lady, Madame Spiering, pose five days for her hand alone.
He forsakes Portraits for Scenes in Common Life.—As his sitters left him one after another, Dou devoted himself entirely to represent the scenes of common life without giving himself any trouble in selection, being sure that in them he would find opportunities to display his veritable genius, that of detail. He was content to take what first offered as a subject, and the circle of his invention did not go beyond that. He simply observed life in the neighboring shops: the pepper-seller, when she is dangling the scales with the tips of her fingers; the marketwoman verifying the transparence of her eggs by the light of a candle, and the mysterious interior of the barber-surgeon. If he sees in the street a servant coming home from market loaded with vegetables, counting what she has spent and what she is going to steal from the change, there is a picture already made. In the public square he stops to study the faces of the simple dupes gathered around a charlatan vaunting his elixir, teaching the practice of love-philtres, and drawing teeth painlessly. His artist's eye finds motives readily at hand; sometimes in the room of the embroiderer, absorbed in her needlework; sometimes in the juvenile schoolroom, where the martinet overawes his frolicsome pupils. He also delights in representing the joys of the domestic hearth, that ever simple and ever charming picture of the mater familias busy with household cares, while the children are rolling about on the floor at their grandmother's feet. Finally, he sometimes goes so far as to be malicious and to complicate the picturesque accidents of a winding staircase which a woman descends softly to surprise her husband in the kitchen with the servant.
The simplicity of trivialities Dou made the subject of the finest and most precious pictures in the world. The Herring Seller is as finely and minutely painted as The Philosopher in Meditation.
He preferred Interiors to Open-Air Scenes.—Dou seldom painted open-air pictures. Interior light suited him better; and moreover he had learned chiaroscuro from Rembrandt. However, one of his most famous pictures, The Charlatan (in the Old Pinakothek, Munich), is an exception.