14 Facts About Gerrit Dou

Gerrit Dou was born in Leiden, where his father was a manufacturer of stained-glass.

Gerrit Dou studied drawing under Bartholomeus Dolendo, and then trained in the stained-glass workshop of Pieter Couwenhorn.

Gerrit Dou is said to have spent five days in painting a hand, and his work was so fine that he found it necessary to manufacture his own brushes.

Gerrit Dou often represented subjects in lantern or candle light, the effects of which he reproduced with an unparalleled fidelity and skill.

Gerrit Dou often painted with the aid of a concave lens combined with a convex mirror, and to obtain exactness looked at his subject through a frame crossed with squares of silk thread.

Gerrit Dou's chef-d'oeuvre is generally considered to be The Dropsical Woman, and The Dutch Housewife, both in the Louvre.

Gerrit Dou's pictures brought high prices, and one patron, Pieter Spiering, who acted as Swedish Ambassador in The Hague from the mid-1630s, paid him 500 guilders annually simply for the right of first refusal of his latest works.

Gerrit Dou's most noted pupils were Frans van Mieris the Elder and Gabriel Metsu.

Gerrit Dou taught Bartholomeus Maton, Carel de Moor, Matthijs Naiveu, Abraham de Pape, Godfried Schalcken, Pieter Cornelisz van Slingelandt, Domenicus van Tol, Gijsbert Andriesz Verbrugge, and Pieter Hermansz Verelst.

Angels stresses how Gerrit Dou's paintings expressed the paragone debate current around that time.

One of the most troublesome and thus one of the most instructive objects in Gerrit Dou's oeuvre is a relief by Francois Duquesnoy called Putti Teasing a Goat.

Additionally, to objects possibly having a deeper meaning via emblem books, complete scenes in Gerrit Dou's oeuvre have been related to scenes depicted in emblem books or prints.

Gerrit Dou's work commanded high prices long after his death, until the 1860s.

Gerrit Dou's obscurity continued until the 1970s when his reputation was reestablished and has continued since.