Gerrit Dou Painting

Gerrit Dou Paintings

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Gerrit Dou Biography

Netherlands Baroque painter and draftsman
born 1613 - died 1675

Also known as: Gerrit Daw, Gerard Dou, Gerrit Douun, Gerrit Douw, Gerrit Douwen, Gerrit Dov, Gérard Dow, Gerhard Dow, Gerrard Dow, Gerrit Dow, Gherard Dow, Gerrit Dowe.
Student of: Rembrandt (1606-1669).
Founder of: Guild of St Luke at Leiden (from 1648).

Gerrit (Gerard) Dou was born on 7 April 1613 in Leiden, a cultural, intellectual, and commercial crossroads for much of Europe in the seventeenth century. Situated halfway between The Hague and Amsterdam, it had a prosperous textile industry and the first Protestant university in The Netherlands. His father, Douwe Jansz, owned a successful glass engraving workshop in Leiden. Gerrit Dou himself studied the craft for two and a half years with a leading glassmaker, developing an eye for fine details that became characteristic of his painting style.

Around 1627-1628 Dou became a pupil in Rembrandt's workshop, probably agreeing to pay for tuition and materials. From Rembrandt, Gerrit Dou adopted many of his early subjects, his dramatic contrasts of light and dark, a fascination with self-portraiture, and meticulous rendering of textures. When Rembrandt left for Amsterdam in 1631, he stayed in Leiden and continued to perfect his style. Gerrit Dou soon gained an important patron, Pieter Spiering, who was the representative of Queen Christina of Sweden and who agreed to pay him a handsome annual stipend for Gerrit Dou painting.

Dou was lauded as an exemplary painter in 1641 and became a founding member of the Leiden painters' guild in 1648. His fame spread throughout Europe, where his paintings were collected by Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, Cosimo III de Medici, and other elite patrons. The States General of The Netherlands included some of Gerrit Dou paintings in its gift to Charles II of England at his restoration to the British throne in 1660.

Jan de Bye, another patron, presented an exhibition of twenty-seven paintings by Gerrit Dou in 1665. Dou was also a popular teacher, who became the head of the Leiden fine artists (fijnschilders). Among his pupils were Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) and Frans van Mieris the Elder (1635-1681).

He never married and had the reputation of being obsessively neat and detail-oriented. Gerrit Dou died in Leiden in 1675 and was buried in the St. Pieters Kerk on 9 February of the same year.