© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s
Atelier1657
oil on panel
34 x 26.9 cm
signed and dated in brown paint along lower edge:“GDou 1657”
GD-108Gerrit Dou(Leiden 1613 – 1675 Leiden)

How to cite
Surh, Dominique. “Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed.
EditedbyArthurK.

Wheelock

Jr.

and

Lara

Yeager-Crasselt.

New

York,

2020–23.

https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

Gerrit Dou, consummate master of artifice, was renowned for the illusionism of his
niche pictures.

[1]Comparative Figures

As in this remarkable painting, Dou would place figural elements

within the opening of a niche, a motif that served both as a framing device and an
illusionistic construct. Dou not only situated these niches at the very front of thepicture plane, but he also placed pictorial elements, like the tail of the cat in thispicture, so that they extended into the viewer’s realm. To reinforce the connection to
the external world, Dou always placed his light source so that it appeared to illuminate
the front of the niche, generally from the upper left. The niche motif, thus, allowed
Dou to examine issues of reality and illusionism that were central to his artistic
concerns, ones that he reinforced in the meticulous rendering of different materials

Fig 1. Detail of cat’s head, Cat
Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s
Atelier, GD-108

and textures, ranging from hard stone to soft fur.
In this striking painting Dou portrayed a grey-and-white-striped cat crouching in
profile on a stone niche opening into an artist’s studio, a subject that is unique in theartist’s oeuvre.[2] The cat’s individualized character and the specificity of the portrayalsuggest that it was modeled after a particular animal.[3] Using a brush consisting of© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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only a few bristles, Dou applied countless minuscule strokes of multicolored paint tocreate the cat’s plush fur (fig 1). With its tail that seems to twitch, alert eyes, andunmistakable curiosity animating its presence, the cat appears alive as it focuses its
attention on something to the right of the picture plane.
Dou appears to have conceived this unusual painting with a quite different
composition. X-radiographs have shown that Dou initially painted a young woman
leaning forward toward the cat before painting the red curtain hanging from the niche[(fig 2) and (fig 3)].[4] An infrared reflectogram reveals a small rectangular shape in
the lower right corner of the windowsill that may have been a mousetrap [(fig 4) and(fig 5)].[5] Technical photographs also suggest that the niche once extended beyond
the upper and right edges of the panel, suggesting that Dou initially began painting on

Fig 2. X-radiograph of Cat Crouchingon the Ledge of an Artist’s
Atelier, GD-108

a larger panel that he later reduced in format. This idea is reinforced by the fact that
only a single bevel is found on the reverse of the panel, by which one can infer thatthe panel has been trimmed down on the other three sides.[6]Other composition changes may also have occurred. The X-radiograph and infrared
photograph indicate that a curtain was initially gathered about two-thirds up the left
side of the painting and that a circular object once existed in the center-left, perhaps a
globe resting on a table [(fig 6) and (fig 7)].[7] Nevertheless, it is not certain whether
or not these pictorial elements were part of a preliminary stage of the final
composition or belonged to an earlier, altogether unrelated scene.[8]A painting focused on a cat is quite unusual in seventeenth-century painting.[9] The
most comparable image occurs not in a painting but in an engraving—Cornelis
Visscher’s (1629–58) The Large Cat, ca. 1657 (fig 8). Not only do the two works datefrom about the same year, they both portray a crouching feline in profile. Although

Fig 3. X-radiograph of Cat Crouchingon the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier,
GD-108, with X-ray superimposed inregistration with the visual image(composite: John Twilley)

Dou may have known of this print and it may have inspired his painting, a directconnection seems unlikely since the two works are quite different in character. The
cat in Visscher’s engraving is dozing and has not noticed a small mouse in behind it,
whereas Dou’s cat is alert and alive, intently gazing into the distance.[10]Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier relates to a very different
iconographic tradition than that of Visscher’s engraving, one that stems from theanimal’s reputation for extraordinary vision. This attribute was often exploited by late
sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century artists in their depictions of the Allegory ofSight (Visus).[11] An engraving from 1595, Sense of Sight by Jan Saenredam(1565–1607) after a design by Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), shows a cat, possibly
an exotic lynx, looking out at the viewer, while a woman wearing a plunging décolleté
admires herself in the mirror as her suitor embraces her and gazes wantonly at her

Fig 4. Infrared reflectogram of Cat
Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s
Atelier, GD-108

bosom (fig 9).[12] This aspect of sight is further expressed by the poignant gaze of thefeline crouching next to Adam and Eve in Hendrick Golztius’s Fall of Man in the© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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National Gallery of Art, Washington (fig 10).[13] Reinterpreted here with thefamiliarity and immediacy of daily life, Dou emphasizes the cat as the embodimentof sight by highlighting its intense gaze and alert demeanor.
As in many of his other niche scenes, Dou also includes a scene in the deep recessesof the background that enhances the painting’s iconographic meaning. Here one sees
an artist painting at his easel. Although Dou often included easels in the backgroundsof his paintings, nowhere else does he depict an artist actively engaged in painting.[14]Near the artist is a violin resting on a table, a reference to the parallels that exist
between a musician and a painter, both of whom use the imagination to create theirworks of art.[15]Fig 5. Detail of infrared reflectogramof Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an
Artist’s Atelier, GD-108, showing
silhouette of what appears to be amousetrap in the lower right corner

The prominent red curtain, beautifully depicted with subtle violet highlights
shimmering in the cascading of light across the iridescent fabric, also relates to thepainting’s underlying concern for the interrelationship of illusion and reality. The
depiction of such a dazzling curtain evokes the famous story from classical antiquityof Parrhasius, whose painting of a curtain was depicted in such a lifelike manner that
it fooled his artistic rival, Zeuxis, who asked that it be pulled aside to reveal the
supposedly-concealed painting beneath it. The story of artistic rivalry was retold byseventeenth-century art theorists such as Karel van Mander (1548–1606) in his
Schilder-Boeck (1604) and by Phillips Angel (ca. 1618–62) in his Praise of Painting(1642).[16] Dou explicitly referenced the anecdote in Painter with a Pipe andBook from ca. 1645 in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam (fig 11).[17] Dou was often
praised for his convincing illusionism by contemporaries like the poet Dirck

Fig 6. Infrared photograph of Cat
Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s
Atelier, GD-108

Traudenius, who referred to Dou in 1662 as the “Dutch Parrhasius.”
The question remains as to why Dou turned his iconographic focus from a figuralgroup involving a cat, a mousetrap, and young woman to a simplified scene of a catalone within an architectural niche. The iconography of the cat and mousetrap was
relatively novel in genre painting in the 1650s, and with his initial layout of thecomposition, Dou may have intended to explore the symbolism of love’s
entrapment.[19] The earlier compositional idea relates to paintings Dou
made somewhat earlier in the 1650s, such as Kitchen Scene in Copenhagen, Statens
Museum for Kunst, or The Mousetrap in Montpellier, Musée Fabre (fig 12).[20] Dou’s
final image emphasizing the cat’s sense of sight was an innovative way of
reinterpreting this pictorial tradition to relate this theme to the status of the artist.
The present work is one of three known paintings by Dou featuring animals.[21] King
Augustus II acquired Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier in the earlyeighteenth century for the imperial house collections of the Royal Palace in Dresden,

Fig 7. Infrared photographsuperimposed on X-radiograph withinverted density grayscale of Cat
Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s
Atelier, GD-108 (composite: John
Twilley)

where it remained, with nineteen other autograph paintings by Dou, until the third
decade of the twentieth century.[22] In the 1920s the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden de© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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accessioned the painting, and handed the work over to the former Royal House of
Wettin as part of a group of restituted artworks from the State of Saxony.[23] It was
subsequently acquired by a private collector in Germany. It remained in thatcollection until 2006, when it was acquired by the Leiden Collection.

- Dominique Surh, 2017

Fig 8. Cornelis Visscher, The Large
Cat, ca. 1657, engraving on laid paper,
22.1 x 31.5 cm, National Gallery ofArt, Washington D.C., Ailsa Mellon
Bruce Fund, 1995.72.1

Fig 9. Jan Saenredam, after Hendrick
Goltzius, Sight, ca. 1595–96,
engraving, 177 x 124 mm,
Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, RP-P-1884-A-7717

Fig 10. Hendrick Goltzius, Fall ofMan, 1616, oil on canvas, 104.5 x
138.4 cm, National Gallery of Art,
Washington D.C., Patrons’ PermanentFund, 1996.34.1© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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Fig 11. Gerrit Dou, Painter with Pipeand Book, ca. 1645, oil on panel, 48 x
37 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, SKA-86

Fig 12. Gerrit Dou, The Mousetrap, ca.
1650, oil on panel, 47 x 36 cm, MuséeFabre, Montpellier, © Musée Fabre —Montpellier Agglomération / cliché F.
Jaulmes© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Endnotes
1. Dou painted these so-called “niche” pictures from the mid-1640s until the end of his career (see GD-103, GD-105, and GD-106). See Angela K. Ho, “Gerrit Dou’s Niche Pictures: Pictorial Repetition andMarketing Strategy,” Athanor 25 (2007): 59–67.
2. Felis silvestris catus descends from the wildcat. See Luke Hunter, Carnivores of the World (Princeton,
2011), 7, 16.
3. The portraitlike character of the cat was noted in 1859 in the given title, “Master Dou’s Housecat,” when
it hung, beginning in 1817, in the northern gallery of the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden. See Wilhelm
Schäfer, Die Könligliche Gemälde-Gallerie zu Dresden zur Erleichterung eingehender Studien in derGeschickte der Malerei und deren Kunstkritik / Allen Jüngern und Freunden der Kunst nach der Ordnung
der Räume beschreibend und erläuternd vorgefürht und mit einem resumirenden Verzeichnisse der Maler
begleitet, 2 vols. (Dresden, 1859), 2: 672–73, no. 1077.
4. Ronni Baer has suggested that the young woman originally belonged to a separate composition and thatwhen she was painted out, the cat and the curtain were painted in. Baer speculates that the young woman
was intended as part of an independent kitchen scene and was shown leaning forward to pour from ajug. See Ronni Baer, “Of Cats and Dogs: Domestic Pets in Rembrandt and Dou,” in Een Kroniek voor
Jeroen Giltaij: Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2012): 67–69. n. 19, fig. 4.
5. The object has a diagonal lever at the top and is strikingly similar to other mousetraps in paintings of theperiod, as seen, for example, in Domenicus van Tol’s Boy with a Mousetrap by Candlelight, from ca.
1664–65 (DT-100) or in Dou’s Girl with a Cat and Mousetrap (fig. 6). For a different interpretation of
the changes visible in the X-radiograph, see Ronni Baer, “Of Cats and Dogs: Domestic Pets in
Rembrandt and Dou,” in Een Kroniek voor Jeroen Giltaij: Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis (2012): 67–69.
6. On the beveling of the panel’s reverse on the left side, see Annette Rupprecht, “Gerrit Dou, A Cat
Crouching in a Ledge, GD-108,” technical report dated March 2012, kept on file, The Leiden Collection,
New York.
7. The infrared photograph was taken with a InGaAs camera with 1500–1680nm, bandpass filter(photograph: Shawn Digney-Peer). The globe appears not to have been painted but merely planned. See
Dominique Surh, Ilona van Tuinen, and John Twilley, “Insights from Technical Analysis on a Group of
Paintings by Gerrit Dou in the Leiden Collection,” JHNA 6, no. 1 (Winter 2014):
DOI:10.5092/jhna.2014.6.1.3.
8. For an argument that Dou incorporated the cat in the initial stage of the preparatory design because its
silhouette was left in reserve and remained unchanged despite the other modifications to thecomposition, see Dominique Surh, Ilona van Tuinen, and John Twilley, “Insights from TechnicalAnalysis on a Group of Paintings by Gerrit Dou in the Leiden Collection,” JHNA6, no. 1 (Winter 2014):
DOI:10.5092/jhna.2014.6.1.3. Arthur Wheelock (verbal communication with Dominique Surh) has© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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questioned this conclusion since no evidence of a reserve is seen in the X-radiograph of the painting.
9. Cats were often included in painting as ancillary figures, with a wide array of associations and meanings.
For a survey of the cat in Dutch seventeenth-century painting, see Susan Donahue Kuretsky,“Rembrandt’s Cat,” in Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandish Art from 1500 to
1800; Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter (Zwolle, 2011), 263–76.
10. Susan Donahue Kuretsky, “Rembrandt’s Cat,” in Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in
Netherlandish Art from 1500 to 1800; Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter (Zwolle, 2011), 263–76, fig.
4.
11. I would like to thank Eric Jan Sluijter for suggesting, back in 2008, that the present painting could be areference to the Allegory of Sight. See Eric Jan Sluijter, “Venus, Visus, and Pictura,” in Seductress ofSight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (Zwolle, 2000) 87–159, esp. 90–91. On the wide range of
meanings associated with the cat in the seventeenth century, see Susan Donahue Kuretsky, “Rembrandt’s
Cat,” in Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandish Art from 1500 to 1800; Essays in
Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter (Zwolle, 2011), 263–76, esp. 266, n.7; for a discussion of the cat in theemblematic tradition, see Ronni Baer, “Of Cats and Dogs: Domestic Pets in Rembrandt and Dou,” in
Een Kroniek voor Jeroen Giltaij: Kroniek van he Rembrandthuis (2012): 67.
12. The New Hollstein Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700: Hendrick Goltzius,
vol. 4, compiled by Harjolein Leesberg and edited by Huigen Leeflang (Ouderkerk aan den IJssel,2012), 106–14, nos. 694–98. The inscription at the bottom of Saenredam’s Sense of Sight reads: “Dummale lascivi nimium cohibentur ocelli / In vitium praeceps stulta ruit” (While wickedly wanton eyes are
too confined / foolish youth falls headlong into vice [trans. David Ratzen]). The choice of a lynx in the
Allegory of Sight is perhaps significant, since the word “lynx” comes from the Indo-European root of aword that means “light” or “brightness,” in reference to the wildcat’s reflective eyes. Pliny the Elder, in
his Natural History (8,28), regarded the vision of the lynx to be superior to all other animals, calling it“the most clear sighted of all quadrupeds.” (8.28). See Elisabeth Piirainen, “Folk Narratives and Legends
as sources of Widespread Idioms: Toward a Lexicon of Common Figurative Units,” Folklore 48 (2011):
129.
13. A cat comingling with a monkey, referring to a sinful man who allows himself to be ruled by lust,
appears in the central foreground of Cornelis Cornelisz. van Haarlem, Fall of Man, signed and dated
1592, oil on panel, 274 x 220 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. No. SK-A-129.
14. Other works by Dou with artists’ easels in the background include his Self-Portrait, ca. 1635–40,
Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museums, Cheltenham, England; Painter with Pipe and Book, 1645,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Self-Portrait, ca. 1645–48, Kremer Collection, Spain; Self-Portrait, 1647,
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden; Violin Player, 1653, Princely
Collections Vaduz Castle, Liechtenstein; Self-Portrait, 1658, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; SelfPortrait, ca. 1665, Van Otterloo Collection, Boston; Self-Portrait, ca. 1665, Metropolitan Museum ofArt, New York; and Self-Portrait, ca. 1665–67, Musée du Louvre, Paris. See Ronni Baer, Gerrit Dou
1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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D.C., National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Washington
D.C., 2000), 70–71, nos. 7, 14, 16, 20, 29; Walter Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museumof Art, 2 vols. (New Haven and London, 2007), 1, no. 37, 158–66; and Frederik J. Duparc, “SelfPortrait,” in Golden Dutch and Flemish Masterworks from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo
Collection (exh. cat. Salem, Peabody Essex Museum; San Francisco, Fine Arts Museums of San
Francisco; Houston, Houston Museum of Fine Arts) (New Haven, 2011), 134–35, no. 20. On theuniqueness of a scene of an artist actively painting, see Ronni Baer, “Of Cats and Dogs: Domestic Petsin Rembrandt and Dou,” in Een Kroniek voor Jeroen Giltaij: Kroniek van he Rembrandthuis (2012): 69,
n. 22.
15. Peter Hecht, “Art Beats Nature, and Painting Does so Best of All: The Paragone Competition in
Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken,” Simiolus 29 (2002): 184–201.
16. Eric Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Niewenhuizen, eds. Leidse Fijnschilders: van Gerrit Dou tot
Frans Mieris de Jonge 1640–1760 (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988),
21, no. 9, 98–100; Ronni Baer, The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), 3 vols. (PhD diss. New York
University, 1990), no. 44; Eric Jan Sluijter, “In Praise of the Art of Painting: On Paintings by Gerrit
Dou and a Treatise by Philips Angel of 1642,” in Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden
Age (Zwolle, 2000), 198–263, esp. 208–13; Ronni Baer, Gerrit Dou 1613–1675: Master Painter in theAge of Rembrandt, ed. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. (Exh. cat. Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art;
London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis) (Zwolle, 2000), 94–95, no. 16; and also Eric
Jan Sluijter, “Didactic and Disguised Meanings? Several Seventeenth-Century Texts on Painting and the
Iconological Approach to Northern Dutch Painting of this Period,” Art in History/ History in Art. Studies
in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Culture, ed. David Freedberg and Jan de Vries (Santa Monica, 1991)
175–201.
17. While Dou often included curtains as framing devices in his portraits of the early 1640s (see GD-116)
the device takes on a heightened form of illusion as a trompe l’oeil element with the Rijksmuseum
painting. Dou’s teacher, Rembrandt, similarly exploited the illusionistic effects of a fictitious curtain in
his Holy Family of 1646, now in the Gemäldegalerie in Kassel, while Dou’s former pupil, Frans van
Mieris (1635–81), paid tribute to the classical anecdote in his painting with Adriaen van der Spelt(1630–73), A Trompe l’oeil with a Garland of Flowers and a Curtain, dated 1658 and now in the Art
Institute of Chicago. See Ben Broos, “A Trompe-l’Oeil with a Flower Piece and a Curtain,” in Great
Dutch Paintings from America, ed. Rieke van Leeuwen (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis; San
Francisco, The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) (The Hague and Zwolle, 1990), 408–12; Eric Jan
Sluijter, “In Praise of the Art of Painting: On Paintings by Gerrit Dou and a Treatise by Philips Angel of1642,” in Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (Zwolle, 2000) 198–263, esp.
208–13. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., “Illusionism in Dutch and Flemish Art,” in Deceptions and Illusions:Five Centuries of Trompe l’Oeil Painting, ed. Sybille Ebert-Schifferer (Exh. cat. Washington D.C.,
National Gallery of Art) (Washington D.C., 1999), 77–87, and cat. no. 8, 126–27; Quentin Buvelot, “A
Trompe l’Oeil with a Garland of Flowers and a Curtain,” in Frans van Mieris 1635–1681, ed. Quentin© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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Buvelot (Exh. cat. The Hague, Mauritshuis; Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) (New Haven,2005), 117–19, no. 16; Peter Hecht, “Art Beats Nature, and Painting Does so Best of All: The Paragone
Competition in Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken,” Simiolus 29 (2002): 184–201, esp. 195–96; and Wayne
E. Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution (New Havenand London, 2004), 122.
18. Cited in Eric Jan Sluijter, “In Praise of the Art of Painting: On Paintings by Gerrit Dou and a Treatiseby Philips Angel of 1642,” in Seductress of Sight: Studies in Dutch Art of the Golden Age (Zwolle, 2000),
209, 332, n. 42.
19. The image of a cat watching a mousetrap was well-known in emblematic traditions. It first appeared inDaniel Heinsius’s popular book of love emblems from 1608, Emblemata amatoria, where it symbolized
the ensnarement of love, with the weary, trapped mouse representing the lovestruck soul and the cat
embodying the lust that ultimately consumes its prey. Heinsius’s twentieth emblem depicts a mouseinside a wooden trap, too frightened to come out for fear of the lurking cat who keeps watch beside it,while a mischievous Cupid with his bow and arrow iterates an underlying theme of love. The
accompanying verse comments on the predicament of the mouse, “Il mal mi preme, et mi spaventa il
peggio” (Evil pursues me and fear of worse haunts me), the first line of a love sonnet by Petrarch.
Heinsius’s Dutch poem moralizes the emblem by drawing a parallel between the human entrapment oflove and the ill-fated mouse, whose predicament leads to his demise.
20. Some examples of the subject include three paintings by Adriaen van der Werff (1659–1722): Children
with a Cat and Guinea Pig, signed and dated 1681, oil on panel, 33.9 x 27.3 cm., London, Buckingham
Palace; Child with a Mouse and Mousetrap, oil on panel, 19.2 x 13.3 cm., London, The National Gallery;
and Two Children Playing with a Cat and a Bird in its Jaws, signed and dated 1678, oil on panel, 24.8 x
19 cm, Johnny van Haeften, London. See also Eglon van der Neer (1634–1703), Children with a Cat andBird, oil on panel, 21 x 17 cm., Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; Willem van Mieris(1662–1747) and Pieter Cornelisz van Slingeland (1640–91), Dead Mouse, oil on panel, signed anddated 1693, 22.7 x 19.6 cm.
21. See the entry on GD-114.
22. I would like to thank Dr. Ute Neidhardt and her research intern Ulrike Müller for providing copies of
Steinhäuser’s unpublished inventory of 1722. The inventory states that GD-108 was delivered byRaschke, who was Prime-Commissar to King Augustus II, and lists GD-108 as “Ein Cipper Katze”
under number “587.” This inventory number corresponds to the original number that appears at thelower right of the painting in tan-colored paint. See also Annegret Laabs and Christoph Schölzel, The
Leiden Fijnschilders from Dresden (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal; Dresden,
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen) (Zwolle, 2000).
23. See Sächsisches Gesetzblatt. Gesetz über die Auseindandersetzung zwischen dem Freistaate Sachsen unddem vormaligen Köningshause (Dresden, 9 August 1924), no. 37.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Provenance
Art market, Antwerp; [to Raschke, First Commissioner for King Augustus II].
King Augustus II (1670–1733), Royal House Collections, Dresden, by 1722; Collection of theGemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden, by 1817; restituted to the House of Wettin, 1924; [P. Rusch,
Dresden, 1927].
Private Collection, Rheinland (sale, Lempertz, Cologne, 20 May 2006, no. 1040 [Johnny van Haeften,
Ltd., London, 2006]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Exhibition History
Oxford, Ashmolean Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, December 2009–January
2011 [lent by the present owner].
Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Dutch Treat,” 11 October 2011–6 January 2012 [lent by thepresent owner].
Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal, “Gerrit Dou: The Leiden Collection from New York,” 9 March–31
August 2014 [lent by the present owner].
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, “An Eye For Detail: Dutch Painting
From The Leiden Collection,” September 2014–May 2015 [lent by the present owner].
Paris, Museé du Louvre, “Masterpieces of The Leiden Collection: The Age of Rembrandt,” 22
February–22 May 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The Leiden
Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].
Shanghai, Long Museum, West Bund, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals in the Dutch Golden Age:
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection,” 23 September 2017–25 February 2018 [lent by the present
owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpiecesof The Leiden Collection,” 28 March 2018–22 July 2018 [lent by the present owner].
St. Petersburg, The State Hermitage Museum, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer: Masterpieces of
The Leiden Collection,” 5 September 2018–13 January 2019 [lent by the present owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age. Masterpieces fromThe Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May 2019 [lent by the present
owner].
© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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References
Hübner, Julius. Verzeichniss der Königlichen Gemälde-Gallerie zu Dresden. Dresden, 1856, 229, no.
1077.
Schäfer, Wilhem. Die Könligliche Gemälde-Gallerie zu Dresden zur Erleichterung eingehender Studien in
der Geschickte der Malerei und deren Kunstkritik / Allen Jüngern und Freunden der Kunst nach der
Ordnung der Räume beschreibend und erläuternd vorgefürht und mit einem resumirenden Verzeichnisseder Maler begleitet. 2 vols. Dresden, 1859, 2:672–73, no. 1077.
Hübner, Julius. Catalogue de la Galerie Royale de Dresden. Dresden, 1867, 279, no. 1135.
Gower, Lord Ronald. The Figure Painters of Holland. London, 1880, 94.
Hübner, Julius. Catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden. Dresden, 1884, 269, no. 1230.
Woermann, Karl. Catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden. 3rd ed. Dresden, 1896, 185, no.
1705. Originally published as Katalog der Königlichen Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden, Dresden, 1896, 180,
no. 1705.
Woermann, Karl. Catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden. 4th ed. Dresden 1899, 185, no.
1705. Originally published as Katalog der Königlichen Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden, Dresden, 1899, 554,
no. 1705.
Martin, Wilhelm. “Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schilderslevenvan zijn tijd” (PhD diss. Universiteit Leiden, 1901), 244, no. 362.
Martin, Wilhelm. Gerard Dou. Translated by Clara Bell. London, 1902, 127, no. 123.
Woermann, Karl. Catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden. 5th ed. Dresden, 1902, 185, no.
1705. Originally published as Katalog der Köninglichen Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden, Dresden, 1902, 550,
no. 1705.
Woermann, Karl. Catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery in Dresden. 6th ed. Dresden, 1905, 186, no.
1705.
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. Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke, 1:461, no. 381. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis
der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen andParis, 1907–28.
Woermann, Karl. Catalogue of the Royal Picture Gallery at Dresden. 7th ed. Dresden, 1908, 182, no.
1705.
Von Wurzbach, Alfred. Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon:Auf Grund Archivalischer

Forschungen

Bearbeitet. 3 vols. Vienna and Liepzig, 1906–11, 418.
Martin, Wilhelm. Gerard Dou, sa vie et son oeuvre. Etude sur la peinture hollandaise et les marchaunds© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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au dix septième siècle. Paris, 1911, 197, no. 210.
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no. 1705. Originally published as Katalog der Königlichen Gemäldegalerie zu Dresden. Dresden, 1912,
169, no. 1705.
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Gesamtausgaben 24. Stuttgart and Berlin, 1913, 143.
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vormaligen Köningshause. Dresden, 9 August 1924, no. 37.
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Giltaij: Kroniek van het Rembrandthuis. (2012): 62–69.
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Paintings by Gerrit Dou in the Leiden Collection.” JHNA 6:1 (Winter 2014): 2-4, 12, 21, 24-26, figs. 7ab, 56, 68a-b, 71a-b, 72 a-b. DOI:10.5092/jhna.2014.6.1.3.
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Daria Babich and Daria Kuzina. Exh. cat. Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts; St.
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Technical Summary
The support is a vertically grained panel made from a single oak plank of Baltic origin. The wood comesfrom a tree felled after 1588.[1] The panel is beveled only on the right edge, as viewed from reverse. There
are four overlapping circles inscribed in the reverse of the panel in the lower quarter. The center of each ismarked with a compass point. According to Ian Tyers’ Dendochronological report, the presence of these“partial ‘daisy-wheel’ apotropaeic mark[s] scratched on the back of the board…both strongly suggests that it
has been cut down, and also that it is a re-used board, possibly originating from room paneling.”[2]The panel was prepared with a light colored ground. It is radio-opaque, indicating it contains a dense pigment
such as lead white, and it accentuates the wood grain in the X-radiograph. The paint was built up in thinlayers of light over dark. Infrared reflectography [3] and the x-radiograph show numerous compositionalchanges, which may be indicative of an entirely different composition. Originally a young woman was
depicted leaning forward in the lower right corner of the painting. Her proper right arm was bent as if she
was pouring something. Just below this figure was a rectangular shape that may have been a mousetrap. In
addition, there was a curtain on the left side of the composition and a round shape, which may have been aglobe, can be seen vertically centered on the left. Also, the arch of the niche was originally taller and broader,extending beyond the edge of the panel on the top and the right. This is further indication that the panel was
originally larger.
The painting is in good condition. There are drying cracks in the dark brown shadows and there are a few© 2024 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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areas of slightly raised paint. There are small protrusions and related craters throughout the paint. The
painting was treated in 2006.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Ian Tyers, Dendochronological report November 2010.
2. Ian Tyers, Dendochronological report November 2010.
3. Infrared reflectography at 1500 – 1680 microns was performed by Shawn Digney-Peer using an InGaAs
camera with a bandpass filter.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection