Adriaen van Ostade was the elder brother and the master of Isack van Ostade (1621–1649), who is equally well represented at the Louvre. although he painted two Interiors (Nos. 2512 and 2514), a Toit à porcs (No. 2513), a Halt (No. 2509), and an overcrowded Travellers Halting (No. 2508), his best works, here as elsewhere, represent landscapes and frozen river scenes.
Adriaen van Ostade had also as pupils Cornelis Bega (1620–1664), by whom the Louvre possesses a very late Rustic Interior (No. 2312), of 1662; and H. M. Sorgh, called Rokes (1611?–1670), three of whose panels (Nos. 2571–2573) are exhibited.
GERARD DOU
Gerard Dou (1613–1675) was in his day a highly popular and prosperous painter of petty tragedies. As a boy of fifteen he entered the studio of “the skilled and far-famed Mr. Rembrandt,” who was, however, his senior by only seven years. One is apt to tire of his irritating parade of cleverness in the manipulation of light and shade effects, and over-scrupulous and niggling treatment of detail. Yet it is these very qualities that brought him financial success when in later life Rembrandt was receiving scanty treatment at the hands of the art patrons of Holland. The Dentist (No. 2355) is an early work. Dou’s Portrait of an Old Lady (No. 2358) is now held to be a Portrait of Rembrandt’s Mother, and is regarded as the companion picture to the Old Man Reading (No. 2567), by Dou’s pupil, Godfried Schalcken. The Grocer’s Shop (No. 2350), which has been, with needless precision, “ranked about the seventh best of this master’s productions,” is signed in full on the slate, and dated 1647 on the mortar, while the Cook with a Dead Cock (No. 2353) is signed on the window-sill, and dated 1650.
PLATE XXXII.—GERARD DOU
(1613–1675)
DUTCH SCHOOL
No. 2348.—THE DROPSICAL WOMAN
(La Femme Hydropique)
In a well-appointed room, lighted by an arched window on the left, an old woman is seated in an arm-chair. The sick woman, who raises her eyes to heaven and is taking a spoonful of medicine from a young woman, gives her right hand to a girl who kneels on the left by her side. Towards the right stands the doctor, who holds up to the light a glass full of liquid. A chandelier hangs in the centre, and on the right are a large tapestry curtain and a wine-cooler.
Signed on the edge of the book placed on the reading-desk in the left foreground:—
“1663. g. dov. ovt. 65 jaer.”
Painted in oil on panel.