Gerrit Dou

Comte de Merle, Paris;
His sale, Paris, Paillet/Juillot, 1 March 1784, lot 77, for 900 Francs;
Chevalier Sébastien Erard (1752-1831), Château de la Muette, Bois de Boulogne, Paris;
His deceased sale, Paris, Lacoste, 23 April 1832, lot 78;
Sir Edward Page-Turner, Battlesden House, Preston Park, Brighton;
Lady Page-Turner, Battlesden House, Brighton;
Her deceased sale, London, Christie's, 21 February 1903, lot 19;
Dr. Jules Porgès, Paris, 1906;
Baron Max von Goldschmidt-Rothschild, Frankfurt, by 1913;
Alexander Oppler, Grünewald (according to a label on the reverse);
Samuel van den Bergh, Wassenaar (confiscated by German forces in May 1940 and removed to Germany in 1944);
F. Mont, New York, 1950;
With Newhouse Galleries, New York;
Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. collection, New York, 1951;
With P. de Boer, Amsterdam, from whom acquired in 1965 by the present owner.

Leiden, Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Rembrandt, 15 July - 15 September 1906, no. 11, reproduced in the catalogue;
Paris, Dutch Exhibition, 1911;
Coral Gables (Florida), University of Miami Art Gallery, Dutch Old Masters, Part II from the collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 6 February - 9 March 1951, no. 20, reproduced in the catalogue;
Richmond (Virginia), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Dutch and Flemish Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 19 October - 25 November 1951;
Richmond (Virginia), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, "The Little Masters". Paintings by Artists of the Netherlands and Belgium from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 13 October 1953 - 11 May 1955, pp. 13-14 in the catalogue, reproduced in colour on the cover;
Amsterdam, P. de Boer, Spring 1965, no. 22.

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné..., London 1829, vol. I, p. 21, no. 62 (as oil on panel, 12 by 9 in., as dated 1645);
W. Martin, Dou Catalogue, Leiden 1901;
A. von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon..., Vienna-Leipzig 1906, p. 417;
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., London 1907, vol. I, p. 401, no. 164 (as oil on panel, 13 by 9 1/2  in., as dated 1645);
W. Martin, Gerard Dou, sa Vie et Son Oeuvre, trans. by L. Dimier, Paris 1911, p. 182, no. 116;
W. Martin, Des Meisters Gemälde. Gerrit Dou (Klassiker der Kunst), Stuttgart-Berlin 1913, pp. 195-6, reproduced p. 113 (dated to circa 1670-75);
R. Baer, The paintings of Gerrit Dou, doctoral dissertation, New York University 1990, cat. C72 (under Works of Rejected Attribution);
E. de Jongh, 'Erotica in vogelperspectief. De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks zeventiende-eeuwse genrevoorstellingen,' in Simiolus, vol. 3, 1968-69; republished as a collection of essays in E. de Jongh, Kwesties van betekenis. Thema en motief in de Nederlandse schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw, Leiden 1995, pp. 40-41, reproduced fig. 25 (translated into English, edited by M. Hoyle, Primavera Pers, Leyden, 2000).

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting is on a carefully selected, stable oak panel bevelled all round, which has clearly never moved or cracked. The minute original brushwork and finish is beautifully intact, with successive layers of old varnish having accumulated over time . There are just one or two tiny chips to be seen in the original paint, in the girl’s veil around her neck. The only tiny retouchings evident under ultraviolet light are the little dark marks on her arm and on her scarf, which seems to be entirely superfluous old darkened touches. A few more recent chips in the varnish layers can be seen in the signature and in one or two places in the dark background, with one also superficial diagonal line in the varnish at centre right. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

A pupil of Rembrandt's for three years, Dou was greatly admired by contemporaries and collectors in the ensuing centuries for his meticulous painting technique and the extraordinary illusionistic effects he was able to achieve through the paint medium. A number of biographical accounts attest to the fact that he was very highly paid (indeed second only to his former master, Rembrandt) and high prices were being paid for his works well into the 19th century.

Dou's genre paintings are often imbued with subtle emblematic meanings which would certainly not have been lost on his public. Dou was by no means unique in this regard and his works can be appreciated on many levels, both literal and symbolic: his Old Man Lighting a Pipe (private collection, England), for example, is an exquisitely detailed rendition of a man seated in a spartan interior but many of the objects scattered around him allude to the 'fleeting nature of earthly existence';¹ and his Violin Player (Liechtenstein Princely Collections) is not only a convincing illusionistic scene of a violinist leaning out of a trompe l'oeil window, for the violinist's pose would seem to suggest that music can 'inspire the painter's creative faculties'.² In 17th-century paintings, and in particular in Dou's own work, certain everyday objects took on other meanings and were therefore chosen by the artist for a specific reason: a set of scales, for example, could allude to the virtues of moderation and temperance; an empty bird-cage was a conventional symbol of immorality; and the open mouse-trap and lascivious expression of the cat in this painting could equally have carried some erotic overtones. Indeed, in his 1968-69 essay (see Literature) Eddy de Jongh has eruditely proposed a specific interpretation of the scene set before us: the open jug resting on its side may perhaps symbolise the uterus, while the dead duck may be an allusion to the concept of 'birding', the cat and the mouse-trap to captive love. 

The window frame in this panel, with volutes crowning pilasters either side of the main aperture, is not dissimilar to that used in Dou's small panel showing An Old Woman at a half-door, in the Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Milan.³ The trompe l'oeil bas-relief crowning the window showing Putti playing with lions also finds parallels with the bas-relief of Putti playing with a goat which, based on François Duquesnoy's sculpture (today in the Galleria Doria Pamphilji, Rome), was often repeated in paintings by Dou: see, for example, the aforementioned Violin Player (Liechtenstein Princely Collections), The Grocery Shop (Royal Collection, London) and A Poulterer's Shop (National Gallery, London).⁴ The Royal Collection painting is dated 1672 and a similar dating has been proposed for the National Gallery picture, to which it is closely related in both subject matter and painting technique. The present panel would also appear to date from around this time and its brushwork, rather less precise than in his earlier more 'Rembrandtesque' paintings, would indicate that it too is a mature work by the artist. Although there is a certain amount of precision in the better preserved areas of this picture – the textures of the draped carpet and the overturned jug on the ledge are beautifully rendered – the individual brushstrokes meticulously describing every detail are not visible here.

Dou's original arched-top panel consists of the stone window frame and everything that lies within it. It was probably inserted into a larger panel some time in the first quarter of the 19th century, since the painting is described in 1829 by Smith and in the 1903 sale catalogue of the collection of Sir Edward Page-Turner as with the window being 'adorned with ivy' (see Provenance and Literature). When compiling the list of paintings by Dou for her 1990 doctoral dissertation Dr. Ronni Baer knew the painting only from the black and white reproduction used in W. Martin's 1913 Klassiker der Kunst volume. Having now inspected the painting in the original Dr. Baer concurs with De Jongh and all earlier authors on Dou's oeuvre, considering the central section of the panel entirely by Dou himself.

PROVENANCE
The Château de la Muette is situated on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne near the Porte de la Muette. It started life as a royal hunting lodge but was transformed into a palace by Henri II for his favourite daughter Marguerite de Valois. It was subsequently reconstructed by Louis XV in the 18th century and used by him to entertain his mistresses, including Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry. In post-revolutionary France the château became state property and was split into two wings. One wing and most of the grounds were purchased in 1820 by Sébastian Erard, a manufacturer of pianos used by Chopin and Liszt.

1  See R. Baer, in Gerrit Dou 1613-1675. Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, exhibition catalogue, Washington, National Gallery of Art, 16 April – 6 August 2000, pp. 72-3, cat. no. 5, reproduced in colour.
2  Baer, in op. cit., pp. 104-5, cat. no. 20, reproduced in colour.
3  Dated by Baer to circa 1660-65; ibid., p. 114, under cat. no. 25, reproduced fig. 1.
4  For The Grocery Shop see Baer, ibid., pp. 134-5, cat. no. 35, reproduced in colour, and for A Poulterer's Shop see W. Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. I, Landau/Pfalz 1983, p. 536, cat. no. 296, reproduced in colour plate 296.