Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/440

 416 GERARD DOU SECT. 207. THE NIGHT-SCHOOL. Sm. Suppl. 2 ; M. 320^. The left and right upper corners are rilled with a curtain. On the left sits the schoolmaster, facing the spectator with a cane in his right hand. He points with his left hand to a paper which a little girl, standing at his side, reads by the light of a candle. To the right behind him a boy is going away ; to the left of this boy is seen the head of a woman reading. In the background pupils are working by candlelight at a table. Another candle is visible beyond them, while in the right foreground is a lighted lantern. The picture is not a copy of the Amsterdam picture (206), as Martin suggests, but rather a replica varied in essential details. " Painted in a freer manner than is usual with this artist " (Sm.). Signed in full on the cross-bar of a bench in the right foreground ; panel, 14^ inches by 13^ inches. Now in the Uffizi, Florence, 1891 catalogue, No. 786; it was there in 1842 (Sm.). 208. The Night-School. The schoolmaster comes close to the candle to trim his pen ; a boy is lighting another candle from the master's. In the background is a girl with a lantern. Sale. Sir George Page, and others, of London, Paris, 1786. 209. AN ASTRONOMER WITH A GLOBE. Sm. Suppl. 54 and 55 ; M. 313 and 313*7. -An astronomer stands at an arched window, with a green curtain drawn back on the right. He has long curls and wears a lilac cap. He turns his head upward to the left to find a star, the position of which he may fix with the compasses in his left hand upon a globe to the right of the window-sill. His right hand rests on a large open folio. Beneath the sill a bust of a woman in a pseudo-antique style is let into the wall. Sm. and Martin are wrong in saying that the scene is illumined by a lantern. [Compare 62.] Signed in full under the book and dated 1657 ; panel, 13 inches by io| inches let into a larger panel. See Riegel, p. 321. Sm.'s statement that there was a second picture of the subject at Brunswick is wrong, as no such picture is mentioned in the catalogues. In the Salzdahlum Gallery. Now in the Brunswick Gallery, 1900 catalogue, No. 304; it was there in 1842 (Sm.). 210. THE ASTRONOMER. Sm. 96, and Suppl. 15 ; M. 314. An astronomer at a window is attentively reading a book placed on the window-sill. He leans with his right arm on the sill, holding in his right hand a lighted candle ; in his left hand he holds a pair of compasses on a celestial globe. An hour-glass and a half-emptied bottle stand upon a book on the window-sill. On the right is a pilaster adorned with the figure of an angel j on the left a curtain is drawn back against another pilaster. " The luminous effect which emanates from a single candle is so admirably distributed throughout this little picture that the most perfect illusion is produced. ... A jewel of the highest estimation and beauty " (Sm.). Signed in full ; panel, 12 inches by 8 inches.