© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Lady, Seated with a Music Book on Her Lap
Page 2 of 7

Portrait of a Lady, Seated with aMusic Book on Her Lap

ca. 1640–44

Gerrit Dou(Leiden 1613 – 1675 Leiden)

27.2 x 20 cm

oil on panel
signed in dark paint along book edge, lower
right: “GDov” (GD in ligature)
GD-116

How To Cite
Surh, Dominique. "Portrait of a Lady, Seated with a Music Book on Her Lap." InThe Leiden Collection
Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Lady, Seated with a Music Book on Her Lap
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Gerrit Dou’s small-scale portrait of this well-to-do young lady conveys

Comparative Figures

much about her interests, values, and social class. Her tasteful jewelry anddress, as well as the open music book in her lap, suggest that she comesfrom a wealthy family from among Leiden’s literate circles. Her elegant
attire consists of a three-tiered white linen neckerchief around hershoulders, with lace trim and matching lace cuffs that adorn her braceletlength sleeves. She wears a high-necked white collar with several thinstrands of gold beading, and an ornamental black stomacher accented
with a bow from which hangs a single black pearl. This fashionableensemble was current during the early 1640s and was also worn by ladies
inHaarlem

andAmsterdam,

asseen,forexample,inFrans

Hals’s (1582/83–1666) Portrait of a Woman with a Fan of ca. 1640 in theNational Gallery, London, and Rembrandt van Rijn’s (1606–69) Portrait ofAgatha Bas from 1642 in the British Royal Collection (fig 1).[1] Like AgathaBas’s fashionable dress, the ensemble of the present sitter features anFig 1. Rembrandt van Rijn,
Portrait of Agatha Bas, 1641, oilon canvas, 105.5 x 83.9 cm, TheRoyal Collection, London, RoyalCollection Trust, © 2014 Her
Majesty Queen Elizabeth IIamber-colored satin skirt with gold embroidery that contrasts with her
black outer gown. The scale of her lacework is much less bold and heraccessories less ostentatious than that of her Haarlem and Amsterdam
counterparts, indicating her more conservative taste. In keeping with her
reserved demeanor, she wears her hair tied back in a traditional hairdo
with a matching lace headdress that covers her ears and extends to thesides of her face.
Based on her dress style, Baer dates the present portrait to ca.
1640–44.[2] Another closely related painting is Dou’s Portrait of a Lady (fig2). In both of these works, Dou situated the woman in a simple interior
space near a table with books and softened the scene with a deep reddishbrown curtain hanging above and to the left of the sitter. The presentpainting also includes a staircase and column at the left, which help todefine the interior space of the room. The additional illumination from theFig 2. Gerrit Dou, Portrait of aLady, ca. 1635–40, oil on panel,
49.2 x 38.7 cm, The Norton
Simon Foundation, Pasadena,
California, inv. no. F.1969.43.P, ©
2012 The Norton Simon
Foundationleft of this column also creates a play of light and shadow along the backwall, against which the lady is contrasted.
An X-radiograph indicates that the rectangular composition was initiallyconceived with an arched top. The greater visibility of the arch along theupper right-hand side coincides with the direction of the light that falls onto
this area and accounts for the greater content of lead white in theunderlying paint (fig 3). Pentimenti along the figure’s face, right arm, andshoulder seen in the X-radiograph, moreover, indicate that Dou initially© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Lady, Seated with a Music Book on Her Lap
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positioned the sitter centrally beneath the painted arch and later shifted
her to the right by about one centimeter, possibly when he modified thearched-top format and added the curtain to balance the composition. A
similar combination is found in Dou’s Self-Portrait in a private collection in
Spain, as well as in his Painter with a Pipe and Book in the Rijksmuseum,
both from about 1645.[4] The conventional format of the present portrait
suggests that the sitter was married and that Dou most likely originally
painted her portrait with a male pendant, placing the woman on theheraldic left. The ring on her left hand, which Dou executed with only a few
strokes of paint, is probably a wedding ring.[5]Fig 3. X-radiograph of GD-116

The books with which she is engaged suggest that she is a pious andeducated individual. The ornamental clasp and gold detailing on thestanding book on the table are characteristic of a Bible, while the open
music book on her lap, which she actively thumbs as if to turn a page,
indicates her proficiency in reading music. The musical notation of thebook contains four staffs per page and is written with some beamed eighthand sixteenth notes, which would have been typical of a secular piece. Theworn condition of the paint in this area, however, makes it impossible todetermine whether the musical notation was once an identifiable song.
The paint surface is even and smooth, with visibly raised thicker paintFig 4. Detail of brushwork in thewoman’s hair andforehead, Portrait of a Lady,
Seated with a Music Book on Her
Lap, GD-116

throughout the elaborate detail work and highlights. These areas include
the ornamental lace trim of the sitter’s collar, the golden brocade along thecenter of her skirt, and the sparse highlights applied to her headdress aswell as to the bindings of the books on the table. Extremely finebrushstrokes, especially in the stray curly hairs framing the sitter’s face,indicate that the artist used a single, fine bristle for the application of thepaint (fig 4). Though Dou’s polished handling of the brushwork in thisportrait matches the refinement of the sitter, the treatment of her hair isreminiscent of the artist’s much looser handling of a peasant woman’s hairin the A Young Woman in Cleveland from about the same time (fig 5), acomparison that underscores the artist’s great versatility in brushwork

Fig 5. Detail of brushwork in thewoman’s hair and forehead, Gerrit
Dou, A Young Woman, ca. 1640,
oil on panel, 35 x 31 cm, The
Cleveland Museum ofArt, Bequest of William G. Mather,1951.325

depending on the formality of the subject matter.
-Dominique Surh

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Portrait of a Lady, Seated with a Music Book on Her Lap
Page 5 of 7Endnotes
1. See Marieke de Winkel, Fashion and Fancy: Dress and Meaning in Rembrandt’s Paintings(Amsterdam, 2006).
2. Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New YorkUniversity, 1990), no. 34.
3. For the Norton Simon painting, see Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),”
3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1990), no. 35; Amy Walsh,Northern European
Paintings at the Norton Simon Museum (New Haven and London, forthcoming 2013), no.
20.
4. Illustrated in Ronni Baer, Gerrit 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), nos. 14, 16; seealso no. 7.
5. Eddy De Jongh, Portretten van echt en trouw (Zwolle, 1986), 138–40.

Provenance(Sale, D. de Jongh, Rotterdam, 26 March 1810, no. 28 [to Le Brun for 505 f.]; sale, Lebrun,Paris, 16 April 1811, no. 112 [to Ballatre for 1450 frs.]).
Sir George Hunter Donaldson (1845–1925), London, until 1911; [Sedelmeyer Gallery, Paris,1911].
[Duits & Co., Ltd., London, by 1948, to Mr. R. A. Constantine, February 1948].
Mr. R. A. Constantine, Yorkshire, until after 1960.
[Martin B. Ascher, London, before 1970] (sale, Christie’s, London, 14 May 1971, no. 129, for7500 gns., to A. Brod [Alfred Brod Gallery, London]).
Private collection, Germany [Charles Roelofsz, Amsterdam, 1982; Kunstandel P. de Boer,Amsterdam, 1983; French & Company, New York, 1983–85].
H. L. de Villeneuve, by 1985 until 2009.
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2009.

Exhibition History© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPortrait of a Lady, Seated with a Music Book on Her Lap
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Middlesbrough, Municipal Art Gallery, “Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Masters of theSixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” 28 September–22 October 1949, no. 31 [lent by theConstantine family].
Scarborough, Municipal Art Gallery, “Dutch and Flemish Masters from the Collection of Mrs.
R. A. Constantine and Family,” June 1960, no. 28 [lent by the Constantine family].
Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, June
2009–July 2011 [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].
Beijing, National Museum of China, “Rembrandt and His Time: Masterpieces from The
Leiden Collection,” 17 June–3 September 2017 [lent by the present owner].

References
Martin, Wilhelm. Het Leven en de Werken van Gerrit Dou. Leiden, 1901, no. 210.
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, 375, no. 97. Translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis
der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols.
Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
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,
10, no. 6.
Exhibition of Dutch and Flemish Masters of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries . Exh.
cat. Middlesbrough, Municipal Art Gallery. Middlesbrough, 1949.
Dutch and Flemish Masters from the Collection of Mrs. R. A. Constantine and Family . Exh.
cat. Scarborough, Municipal Art Gallery. Scarborough, 1960, no. 28.
Baer, Ronni. “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675).” 3 vols. Ph.D. diss. New York
University, 1990, no. 34.
Franits, Wayne. Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch
Art. New Haven and London, 1993, 19–20.
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): 2–4, 8–9, 11, 21–22, figs. 6a–b, 18–20, 60a–b.
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Portrait of a Lady, Seated with a Music Book on Her Lap
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Technical Summary
The painting was executed on a panel made from a single plank of vertically grained oak.
Dendrochronology indicates the tree was felled after 1614.[1] The back of the panel is notbeveled and it bears rough tool marks. This could be an indication that it has been thinned.
Remnants of three metal brads along the top edge indicate that at some point a shim wasprobably attached to the top edge.
The light-colored ground was thinly and evenly applied. It is radio-opaque, accentuating thewoodgrain in the X-radiograph. The paint was built up in successive, thin layers. The Xradiograph shows that originally the composition was arched on the top. It also indicates that thesitter’s body may originally have been situated slightly to the left of its current position. Infrared
reflectography[2] indicates that the contours of the drapery were changed. Both swags wereraised, the left swag more so than the right, and the drapery may have hung down on the right,
similar to the way it does so on the left.
The painting is in very good condition. The panel has a slight convex warp and the paint in thecurtains exhibits some traction crackle. The painting underwent minor treatment in 2009.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Ian Tyers, dendrochronological report, November 2010.
2. Infrared reflectography was performed at unknown parameters.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection