Gerrit Dou - A formative apprenticeship with the young Rembrandt
Gerrit Dou was born in Leiden on 7th April 1613. The son of a glass painter, he learnt the basics of this art in his father's workshop before studying drawing with Bartholomeus Dolendo and later becoming an apprentice to the glass painter Pieter Couwenhorn. At the age of 14, Gerrit Dou studied at his father's behest with the 21-year-old Rembrandt, who happened to live nearby. Rembrandt taught Dou the subtle use of chiaroscuro effects and shaped his understanding of colour. Portraits played an important role in Gerrit Dou's early work; he painted portraits of his teacher Rembrandt, his parents and himself, but also created numerous genre paintings, mostly set in narrow, dark spaces where he could play with light and shadow. When his most important teacher Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, Dou stayed in Leiden and became a freelance painter.
A time-consuming passion for detail
Despite the overwhelming influence of Rembrandt, Gerrit Dou eventually developed his own style, which focused in particular on the meticulous attention to detail. Gerrit Dou is said to have taken five days to paint one hand, and in order to achieve the desired level of detail, made himself his own brush with particularly fine hair. Despite this pronounced obsession with detail and the precise brushwork that went with it, Dou's paintings were by no means stiff, but thrilled his contemporaries with their freshness and vibrancy. To achieve the desired richness of detail, he used technical aids such as a concave lens and a convex mirror to improve his perception and gain the right perspective, and also constructed a grid of silk threads to place all the details in the right place. His contemporaries were impressed by the results of this effort, and his paintings were in demand, especially abroad: the Swedish ambassador Pieter Spiering, for example, acquired a right of first refusal on Gerrit Dou's works for 500 guilders a year, the Swedish Queen Christina owned eleven pieces from Dou's studio, Cosimo III de Medici personally sought out the artist, and King Charles II of England is even said to have offered him a position as court painter. The Dutch court, on the other hand, continued to favour more traditional painters.
Continued sales success into modern times
Gerrit Dou painted almost exclusively in small format, often scenes lit by lamps or candles, demonstrating an equally impressive skill in the rendering of lighting effects as the capturing of details. Dou taught numerous pupils; his most loyal and best-known was the portrait, history and genre painter Frans van Mieris. Dou himself was one of the three most expensive painters of his time after his teacher Rembrandt and his pupil Frans van Mieris, also due to the fact that the slow worker was paid by the hour. In 1648, Dou was one of the signatories of the founding charter of the Leiden Guild of St Luke. Despite all his successes abroad, the artist remained firmly attached to his native Leiden throughout his life. To this day, Gerrit Dou's paintings are in great demand and are sometimes sold for millions at auction - in 2001, the painting The Dentist – brought to Germany in 1923 by the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer - was sold for DM 5.7 million, making it the greatest German auction success at that time.
Gerrit (or Gerard) Dou died in early 1675; his burial in Leiden is attested for 9th February 1675.
Gerrit Dou - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
