Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/361

 SECTION III GERARD DOU GERARD or GERRIT Dou was the son of a Leyden glazier, Douwe Jansz. He was born at Leyden on April 7, 1613, and died there in February 1675, being buried on February 9. According to Orlers, who apparently derived his information from the artist and his relatives, Gerard Dou was first employed in his father's workshop. He then became a pupil, first of the copper-engraver Bartholomeus Dolendo, and of the glass-painter Pieter Couwenhorn, and afterwards, on February 28, 1628, of Rembrandt, with whom he stayed three years, probably until Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in the first half of 1631. In that year Dou set up house for himself at Leyden. In 1644 he promoted the foundation of a Guild of St. Luke in his native town, and when the Guild came into being four years later he became one of its first members. As a painter of genre-pieces and portraits he was held in great respect at Leyden throughout his life. From the first his pictures fetched as high prices as were paid for any examples of the Dutch school. Through his influence on his numerous pupils he became the founder of the so-called Leyden school of " fine painters." Dou's artistic development falls into two distinct periods. In the earlier and briefer of the two he was influenced by Rembrandt ; like his master in his youthful works, Dou at this time was careful and laborious in his drawing and painting, adopted a hard and fast scheme of lighting, and laid on his colour thickly. As to his subjects, he painted studies of heads, portraits, and other single figures, usually on a small scale, and but rarely life-size, or compositions of a few figures in a homely interior. From about 1635-40 Rembrandt's influence on him weakened ; Dou ceased to attempt effects of chiaroscuro in his master's manner j his painting became looser, smoother, and more like enamel, while his compositions were richer, both in the number of figures and in the variety of the accessories. Apart from a comparatively few portraits and pictures of hermits, the picture of middle-class manners predominates in Dou's work of this time, with themes from the quiet, everyday life or the multitude ; moving dramatic episodes like the " Dropsical Woman " in the Louvre, and biblical or historical pictures are the exception. The VOL. i 337 z