Old Woman at a Window with aCandle

1671

Gerrit Dou(Leiden 1613 – 1675 Leiden)

26.5 x 20.5 cm

oil on panel
signed and dated bottom center in brown paint:“GDou / Anno 1671”
GD-103© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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How To Cite
Surh, Dominique. "Old Woman at a Window with a Candle." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited byArthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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In the early nineteenth-century, John Smith observed thatGerrit Dou’s Old

Comparative Figures

Woman at a Window with a Candle, despite its powerful effect, did notexhibit the usual meticulous finish associated with the artist.[1] Indeed, Dou
executed this scene with loosely brushed strokes in the highlighted areasand thinly applied paints in the shadows. The freshness of this techniqueallowed him to capture a spontaneous moment of visual and emotional
suspense. The old woman, seemingly stirred by a noise from outside,leans out of the arched, stone window opening into the darkness.
Illuminated by the flickering flame of the candle, she looks to the side, herlips slightly parted as though she were calling out into the night.
As in some of Dou’s other niche scenes (three of which are in the present
collection: Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier, (GD-108);
Herring Seller and Boy, (GD-106); and Young Woman in a Niche with aParrot and Cage, (GD-105), the artist used the arched window frame bothas a repoussoir device and as a means to concentrate our focus on theFig 1. Gerrit Dou, Young Woman
with a Lighted Candle at aWindow, ca. 1658–65, oil onpanel, 26.7 x 19.5 cm, MuseoThyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid,inv. no. 132 (1930.21), © MuseoThyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

pictorial narrative. Here, Dou positioned the woman so that her candlestick
and its flame provide the painting’s visual focus, similar to his Young
Woman with a Lighted Candle at a Window from ca. 1658–65 (fig 1).
They also emphatically break the picture plane as the woman reaches
across the threshold of the window to extend the path of her light. As thecandlelight flutters in the open air, it casts radiating shadows along theinside of the niche while illuminating Dou’s name and the painting’s date of
1671 inscribed on the sheet of paper attached to the building’s stone
exterior.[2] Simultaneously, the flame casts a reddish glow on the oldwoman’s ruddy face, her simple red and white chemise and bodice, theempty birdcage in the upper right, and the limp body of a dead hen lying on
the windowsill.[3]Dou often included subsidiary figures in the backgrounds of his paintings,
either as narrative commentaries or enhancements to his primary subject.

Fig 2. Gerrit Dou, The Wine
Cellar—An Allegory of Winter, ca.
1660, oil on panel, 30.5 x 25.4
cm, Inv. GE 44 (Hohenbuchau
Collection), © LIECHTENSTEIN,
The Princely Collection, VaduzVienna / SCALA, Florence /Art
Resource, NY (2016)

Here, sketchily blocked out in the dark interior are a man and a woman
who sit before a warming fire. A similar juxtaposition of foreground andbackground figures is seen in Dou’s earlier nocturnal scene The Wine
Cellar from ca. 1660 (fig 2). Here, as Ronni Baer has suggested, the two
figures in the foreground represent “young love” while the solitary figure in
the background references winter and old age.[4] The present work
probably represents an inversion of this idea, with the primary subject
portraying a solitary woman as the embodiment of old age in counterpoint© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at a Window with a Candle
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to the warmth of human companionship shared by the couple in thebackground. The empty wooden pail and the unoccupied birdcage
symbolize life that has expired, as does the dead hen, which signifies thatFig 3. Detail of GD-103, strippedstate photograph, during 2007
conservation treatment by Nancy
Krieg

the old woman herself may be nearing her end.[5]Although the position of the candlestick has particular iconographic andcompositional significance, Dou seems to have arrived at the final
arrangement well into the paint process. Initially, he intended the oldwoman to hold an oil lamp on the window ledge, as can be seen in aphotograph taken during restoration (fig 3). A similar oil lamp, with aflame emitting from its side, is found in Dou’sOld Woman with Two YoungChildren, dated ca. 1655–65, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (fig 4).
Dou subsequently replaced the oil lamp with the basket she now
holds.[6] Intriguingly, the way the woman’s face is lit from the front reflects
the original position of the oil lamp, while the broader network of highlights
and shadows on the niche derive from the candlelight. The character ofFig 4. Gerrit Dou, Old Woman
with Two Young Children, ca.
1655–66, oil on panel, 28 x 22cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,inv. no. 2003.71

these varied light sources indicate that Dou made this compositional
modification at a relatively late stage in the painting’s execution.
Another change in the composition was in the position of the birdcage.
While its final location is comparable to that found in numerous otherpaintings by the artist, infrared photographs indicate that Dou originally
positioned it hanging lower down on the frame, to the right of thebasket.[7] This original location would have placed it along the old woman’s
direct line of sight, thus making it the focus of her gaze, possibly as areference to departed innocence or youth.[8] This change seems to havecoincided with the introduction of the dead hen lying on the ledge,
indicating a deepening of the reference to senescence and the culminationof life. Other changes in the composition are evident at the lower rightcorner. Dou must have originally intended to depict a small flowerpot justbelow the ledge, as pentimenti of its shape can be seen just below thedead chicken in the infrared image. A similar flowerpot is found in acomparable scene of an old woman at a niche from ca. 1660, now in the
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, Vienna.[9]The earliest provenance of Old Woman at a Window with a Candle isfrom the mid-eighteenth century, when the work formed part of the notable
Parisian collections of Nicolas de Montribloud and Claude Tolozan. By1802, when the painting was with the London art dealer Michael Bryan, it© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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was announced as having been part of the Citoyen Robit Collection, anassociation that seems to have been made in error.[10] During the first
three decades of the nineteenth century, the painting was actively tradedat auction in London at least ten times and was owned by at least four
private collectors between 1809 and 1828, a period that attests to theEnglish market’s keen interest in this powerfully atmospheric work.
-Dominique Surh© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at a Window with a Candle
Page 6 of 11Endnotes
1. John Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, andFrench Painters, 9 vols. (London, 1829–42), 1:28, no. 83; the painting is titled Old Woman
at a Window with a Candle.
2. In 2010 Ian Tyers examined the panel for dendrochronological dating and noted theyoungest tree ring was formed in 1637, suggesting the tree from which the panel wasobtained was felled after 1645. See Ian Tyers, dendrochronological report, November 2010,
19–21 (on file, The Leiden Collection, New York).
3. The author would like to thank Dr. Nancy Clum of the Wildlife Conservation Society for help
in identifying the bird as a hen by pointing to the species’s characteristic head ornaments,including the red comb and wattles (and lack of spurs or more elaborate wattles that wouldindicate a cock) seen in the present example.
4. Ronni Baer, “The Wine Cellar,” in Gerrit Dou 1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age ofRembrandt, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Washington D.C., 2000),
110–11, no. 23.
5. For the symbolism of the bird and birdcage, see Young Woman in a Niche with a Parakeetand Cage (GD-105); on the withered hag and empty birdcage as allusions to departed
innocence, see Simon Schama, “Wives and Wantons: Versions of Womanhood in
Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art,” Oxford Art Journal 3 (1980): 5–13.
6. In her 2012 conservation report of the painting, Annette Rupprecht has noted a slightly
raised triangular shape near the base of the old woman’s left hand where the artist painted
the top of the oil lamp, visible in the X-radiograph, the infrared photograph, and the rakinglight photograph (on file, The Leiden Collection, New York).
7. In her 2012 conservation report, Annette Rupprecht notes that the original position of thebirdcage was just to the proper right of the basket in the final arrangement (on file, The
Leiden Collection, New York).
8. See Simon Schama, “Wives and Wantons: Versions of Womanhood in Seventeenth-Century
Dutch Art,” Oxford Art Journal 3 (1980): 5–13.
9. For an illustration, see Ronni Baer, “Old Woman with a Jug at a Window,” inGerrit Dou
1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt , ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat.
Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague,
Mauritshuis) (Washington D.C., 2000), 114–15, no. 25.
10. William Buchanan describes how art dealer Michael Bryan was financed with backers topurchase a large portion of the Robit Collection in Paris, yet Fredericksen notes that there© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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were probably many paintings that were erroneously said to have come from the Robit
Collection but which in actuality came from other sources. The present work may well be oneof those instances, for we know it came from the Tolozan sale in February 1801 and it was
not found in the Robit sale of 11 May 1801. See William Buchanan,Memoirs of Painting,with a Chronological History of the Importation of Pictures by the Great Masters into
England since the French Revolution , 2 vols. (London, 1824), 2:68, no. 65; Burton
Fredericksen, “Notes on Description of Sale Catalog Br-62,” Getty Provenance Index,consulted on 23 May 2012.

ProvenanceNicolas de Montribloud (sale, Paillet and Julliot, Paris, 9 February 1784, no. 36 [to Tolozanfor 2,000 livres]).
Claude Tolozan (1728–96), Paris (his sale, Paillet, 2 February 1801, no. 28 [to Lespinassede Langeac for 2,320 francs]).
Possibly François-Antoine (Citoyen) Robit (ca. 1752–1815), Paris.
[Michael Bryan, London, his private sale, London, 6 November 1801–31 May 1802, no. 65[for 250 gs.]; (sale, Coxe, London, 9 May 1804, no. 71 [for £52.10]).
Walsh Porter (d. 1809) (his sale, Christie’s, London, 14 April 1810, no. 27 [for 210 gs.]).
[William Buchanan, London; (his private sale, Charles Random De Berenger, London, 4June 1810, no. 34 [probably withdrawn]; sale, Christie’s, London, 21 June 1811, no. 43 [toWilliam Smith for £127.1]).
William Smith, Esq. M. P. (sale, Christie’s, London, 10 June 1815, no. 87 [unsold at£101.17]).
Admiral Lord Radstock, London (his sale, Phillips, London, 19 April 1823, no. 53 [unsold at£194.5]; his sale, Christie’s, London, 12–13 May 1826, no. 26 [to Buchanan for £157.10]).
[William Buchanan, London (his private sale, Christie’s, London, 21 April 1828, no. 16[unsold]; private sale, May 1828, no. 25 [unsold]; sale, Christie’s, London, 28 June 1828, no.
28 [unsold at 145 gs.]).
Sanderson Collection, Edinburgh, after 1826.
Sir George Lee Collection, London, 1901.
Sir George Hunter Donaldson (1845–1925), London, until 1911 [Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris,1911].
[Trafalgar Galleries, London, 1977–80].
Private collection (private sale, Christie’s, New York, 30 April 2007, no. 1964; [Otto© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at a Window with a Candle
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From whom acquired by the present owner in 2007.

Exhibition History
London, Bryan’s Gallery, “The Robit Collection,” 1801, no. 65; London, The Old Academy
Room, Pall Mall, 1802.
London, Trafalgar Galleries at the Royal Academy, “Old Master Paintings,” 1977, 22, no. 10[lent by Trafalgar Galleries, London].
London, David Carritt, Ltd., “Ten Paintings by Gerard Dou, 1613–1675,” 13 November–12
December 1980, no. 9 [lent by Trafalgar Galleries, London].
Amsterdam, Waterman Gallery, “The Impact of a Genius: Rembrandt, His Pupils andFollowers in the Seventeenth Century; Paintings from Museums and Private Collections,”
April–May 1983; Groningen, Groninger Museum, 17 May–20 June 1983, no. 18 [lent by aprivate collection].
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum of Art, December 2009–January 2011, on loan with thepermanent collection [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Dutch Treat,” 11 October 2011–6 January 2012[lent by the present owner].
Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal, “Gerrit Dou: The Leiden Collection from New York,” 9March–31 August 2014 [lent by the present owner].
Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art, “Small Treasures: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, andTheir Contemporaries,” 26 October 2014–4 January 2015, no. 11 [lent by the presentowner].
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, August
2015–August 2016 [lent by the present owner].

References
Buchanan, William. Memoirs of Painting, with a Chronological History of the Importation ofPictures by the Great Masters into England since the French Revolution . 2 vols. London,
1824, 2:68, no. 65.
© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Old Woman at a Window with a Candle
Page 9 of 11Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, andFrench Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829–42, 1: 28, no. 83.
Martin, Wilhelm. Het Leven en de Werken van Gerrit Dou. Leiden, 1901, 237, no. 332.
Martin, Wilhelm. Gerard Dou. Translated from the Dutch by Clara Bell. London, 1902, 83.
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent
Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith . 8 vols.
London, 1907–27. Translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke
der hervorragendsten Höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen andParis, 1907–28, 1:428, no. 249, possibly identical with no. 261.
Martin, Wilhelm. Gerard Dou, sa vie et son oeuvre: Etude sur la peinture hollandaise et lesmarchaunds au dix-septième siècle. Paris, 1911, 201, no. 224.
Illustrated Catalogue of the Eleventh Series of 100 Paintings by Old Masters of the Dutch,
Flemish, Italian, French, and English Schools. Sales cat. Sedelmeyer Gallery. Paris, 1911,no. 5.
Old Master Paintings. Exh. cat. London, Trafalgar Galleries at the Royal Academy, 1977, 22,no. 10.
Ten Paintings by Gerard Dou . Exh. cat. David Carritt Limited. London, 13 November–12
December 1980, 28–29, no. 9.
Jansen, Guido and Van de Watering, Ernst. In The Impact of a Genius: Rembrandt, His
Pupils and Followers in the Seventeenth Century . Exh. cat. Amsterdam, K. & V. Waterman
Gallery; Groningen, Groninger Museum. Amsterdam, 1983, 126–27, no. 18.
Sumowski, Werner. Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler. 6 vols. Landau and Pfalz, 1983–95,4: 3702, no. 2252, ill. 3837.
Surh, Dominique, Van Tuinen, Ilona and Twilley, John. “Insights from Technical Analysis on
a Group of Paintings by Gerrit Dou in The Leiden Collection.” Journal of Historians ofNetherlandish Art 6, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 2, 3, 12, 21–22, figs. 12a, 12b, 29, 62a, 62b, 63a,63b.
Weller, Dennis P. Small Treasures: Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Their Contemporaries .
Exh. cat. Raleigh, North Carolina Museum of Art; Birmingham Museum of Art. Raleigh, 2014,
81–83, no. 11.

Versions
Versions and Copies© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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1. After Gerrit Dou, An Old Woman at a Niche by Candlelight, oil on canvas, 33 x 25 cm,monogrammed and dated: “F B ANNO 1688”, Musée des Beaux-Arts.

2. After Gerrit Dou, An Old Woman at a Niche by Candlelight, oil on canvas, 32 x 26 cm,
whereabouts unknown (formerly sale, Stockholm, 22–23 May 2001, no. 1394).

Versions Notes

Technical Summary
The painting was executed on a panel made from a single plank of vertically oriented oak. It has
an earliest fell date of 1645.[1] The panel is beveled on the top, bottom and right edges as seenfrom the reverse. The lack of bevel on the left side indicates that it was probably trimmed. There
are three pronounced horizontal grooves in the panel’s surface, which are visible in raking lightand in the X-radiograph. The longest of these runs from the woman’s chin to the architecture
below the birdcage. It is unclear if these are flaws in the wood or if they occurred when the plank
was milled. Examination in raking light also reveals downward sloping rays emanating from theupper right corner.
The panel was prepared with a thin, light-colored ground, which does not mask the texture of thewood grain. The paint was built up in successive thin layers of light over dark. X-radiographs,
infrared photographs,[2] and examination in raking light reveal numerous artist’s changes. Thewoman was originally depicted holding the base of a tall oil lamp in her proper left hand with her
arm extended straight rather than bent at the elbow holding a pail, as seen in the finalcomposition. In her right hand, she originally held a flat, round object. In addition, the birdcage
originally hung lower down, next to the pail; a flower pot appeared just below the ledge; and thedead poultry was positioned below the ledge as well.
The painting is in good condition and the panel is in plane. There is some abrasion, particularly inthe areas of the artist’s changes and in parts of the dark background. It was treated in 2007.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Ian Tyers, dendochronology report, November 2010. According to Tyers, the narrow widthof the board indicates that it was probably significantly trimmed.
2. Infrared reflectography was performed by Shawn Digney-Peer at unknown specifications.

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