Herring Seller and Boy

ca. 1664

Gerrit Dou(Leiden 1613 – 1675 Leiden)

oil on panel
43.5 x 34.5 cm
signed, lower center, below window: “GDou”(GD in monogram)
GD-106
Currently on view at: Long Museum, Shanghai© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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How To Cite
Baer, Ronni. "Herring Seller and Boy." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock
Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
This page is available on the site's Archive. PDF of every version of this page is available on the Archive,
and the Archive is managed by a permanent URL. Archival copies will never be deleted. New versions areadded only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Herring Seller and Boy
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In this small panel, an old woman and a young boy, gesturing to a shallow

Comparative Figures

tub of fish, stand framed in an arched stone opening. Although the exact
nature of their exchange cannot be determined, they are apparently
discussing the herring she holds in her right hand.[1] The boy’s blue felt hat
and brown pij (frock) worn over a red woolen hemtrock (waistcoat) andwhite shirt identify him as a fisherboy.[2] Consequently, it appears that theboy has brought the fish for the old woman to sell; he’s the purveyor for
rather than the customer of this herring seller.[3] She sports a red jacket,
blue apron, ruffled collar, and white headdress of the type worn by many ofthe elderly women of a certain class that appear in Gerrit Dou’s genre
scenes.[4] Her stern glance—is it dissatisfaction?—allies her to thecommon stereotype of fishwives as raw, coarse women.[5] It is tempting,therefore, to interpret the action in the painting as an illustration of thecontemporaneous expression “to give someone a bokking (a smoked orsaltedherring),”

which

meant

to

shame

them

with

a

sharp

remark.[6] Whatever the nature of the exchange between the boy and thewoman, the disparity in their ages and their physical proximity allow Dou tocontrast the wrinkled skin of the elderly with the smooth fresh face ofyouth.

Fig 1. Jost Amman, “Apotecarius.
Der Apotecker.” (The
Pharmacist), in Panoplia omnium
illiberalium mechanicarum (Bookof Trades), engraving, 148 x 90
mm, British Museum,
1904,0206.103.14, © Trustees of
the British Museum

The window surrounding the figures is a compositional device Dou
developed to enhance the illusionistic character of his genre scenes. Here,it serves many functions. It not only frames the two protagonists, but also
provides a view to the interior of the shop while simultaneously defining thepicture plane. On the window’s deep ledge lies an assortment of still-lifeelements that display the artist’s astounding ability to render each texture,surface, reflective quality, and material with careful yet varied brushwork
visible only by attentive looking. Among these objects are a large head ofcabbage, the curled edges of its leaves echoing the ruff of the woman’s
collar; a bunch of carrots, their greens rendered with bravura flicks of thebrush; some spring onions; and a frayed piece of cloth. The items are
positioned so that each one protrudes beyond the ledge into the viewer’s
space, blurring the distinction between the painted and actual worlds. In

Fig 2. Gerrit Dou, Grocery Shop,
1647, oil on panel, 38.5 x 29 cm,
Musée du Louvre, Paris, inv. no.
1215, photo: Hervé Lewandowski,© RMN-Grand Palais / Art
Resource, NY

addition to the illusionism and beautiful surfaces, the small dimensions ofDou’s works were a ploy to attract, engage, and seduce the viewer.
The illusionistic effect in Herring Seller and Boy is heightened by thestrong illumination streaming in from the upper left—like a spotlight placed
close to the front of the picture. The lighting causes the objects on the sill
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to throw shadows onto the wall below, thereby heightening their tactile
quality. The distorted shadows of the scales hanging from a nail at rightemphasize the strong, directional, and theatrical quality of the light. The“outside” wall below the scales is marked by carefully observed cracks inthe stone. Dou’s prominent signature is rendered as though it werechiseled into the wall below the ledge.
The artist uses both light and handling to differentiate the foreground fromthe background elements. Whereas the figures in the foreground are
carefully delineated—every wrinkle and ruffle described—the women in
the back are more cursorily painted, their features barely indicated, andtheir unspecified transaction conveyed solely by the posture and proximityof their bodies. As X-radiographs indicate, in addition to otherFig 3. Gerrit Dou, A Poulterer’sShop, ca. 1679, oil on panel, 58 x
46 cm, The National Gallery,
London, Bought, 1871, inv.
NG825, © National Gallery,
London / Art Resource, NY

adjustments, Dou made small changes to the placement of these figures
while he was working.[7] A diffuse light envelops them from a second lightsource emanating from the two rows of leaded windows in the left-handwall of the shop.[8]The format Dou chose is fitting for a shop scene, as it recalls the archshaped window behind which several of the tradesmen are shown working
in illustrations by Jost Amman (1539–91) for the Ständebuch of 1568 (fig1).[9] The parallel does not end there. Outside the craftsmen’s arch-shaped
windows in these prints is often found a table pushed flush against the wallthat functions as a ledge to display their wares. Dou’s deep sill provides acomparable ledge, one that, as noted, displays his painterly prowess andvirtuosic craftsmanship.

Fig 4. Gerrit Dou, Herring
Seller, ca. 1650–55, oil on panel,
31 x 23 cm, The Pushkin State
Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow

The earliest dated genre painting in which Dou used an arched window is
his Grocery Shop of 1647 in the Musée du Louvre (fig 2), the firstseventeenth-century Dutch shop scene.[10] Although separated by nearlytwenty years, Grocery Shop and Herring Seller have many elements incommon, including poppies, a ham hock and, beyond them, candles
suspended from the rafters. Scales, a basket of eggs, a pewter tankard(hanging from a shelf behind the eggs in Herring Seller and Boy andcarried by the young boy in Grocery Shop), and shelving holding coveredjars and boxes appear in both paintings. In the Louvre picture, a cask
similar to the one beneath the candles in Herring Seller has a wooden tub
atop it. The strong illumination from the upper left is also comparable.

Fig 5. Gerrit Dou, Herring
Seller, ca. 1670–75, oil on panel,© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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The construction of space in the two works is fundamentally different,
however, showing the strides Dou made in rendering spatial recession as

41 x 30 cm, The State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg

he matured as a painter. The form of Grocery Shop corresponds roughly
to the window depicted. Inside, a table is placed perpendicular to thewindow ledge, allowing the figures to be positioned on either side of it.
Despite the depth of the room, a young boy seems awkwardly squeezed
into an indeterminate space behind the servant girl. By contrast, in thelater Herring Seller and Boy Dou uses the soft light, smaller scale, andmonochromatic color of the background figures to suggest the depth of thespace. The mise-en-scène, with the principal figures now placed close to
the picture plane and the subsidiary figures convincingly engaged at theback of the room, announces a more experienced painter.[11]The carefully described scene in the Leiden Collection painting does not,in fact, correspond to what we know about the nature of seventeenthcentury Dutch shops. These stores tended to carry specific kinds of goods
rather than offer the wide variety of wares on display inHerring Seller andBoy. The vettewariër would have carried butter, ham and candles; thecomenij sold dairy, eggs and meat products; and the apoteker would haveused poppies to make syrup with narcotic properties.[12] Fresh vegetables
and fish were available at the market and from street peddlers.[13] At
market, some vendors sold their wares from a window; unlike the hawkers
and peddlers, these merchants were required to become members of the
shopkeepers’ guild.[14] Shopkeeping, indeed, was a common way for aseventeenth-century woman, especially one from the middle class, tomake a living: owning a shop required no technical skills; women were
tolerated in the shopkeepers’ guilds; and the trade required only some
initial financial capital.[15] Dou’s painting may allude to or conflate both theolder practice of selling wares from a window and the newer type of shopthat specialized in carrying particular goods.
The earliest description of this painting appears in a manuscript catalogue
by E. Munich (1773–85) of works in the galleries and cabinets of theImperial Palace in St. Petersburg:
Gerard Douw.
N.° 534. La Marchande hollandaise.
Elle est vue à demi corps dans sa boutique garnie d’oignons, de© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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carottes, d’une tête de chou rouge et d’un bacquet avec des harangs,
dont elle en montre un à un garçon qui semble en avoir grande envie. Àla muraille du côté gauche en pendent des balances et tout auprès unpanier rempli d’oeufs; au plancher sont suspendus des jambons et un
trousseau de tête de pavots; derrière la marchande, dans la demi-teinte,
se distinguent deux femmes et contre le mur du fond des planchettes
chargées de flacons. Il est peint en 1664.
Cette pièce, que le Comte de Bruhl avait eu de l’Electeur de Bavière etque l’on peut nommer à juste titre un Chef-d’oeuvre, a été gravé par
Pierre Etienne Moitte à Paris sous le nom indiqué.
Sur bois. haut 11. V. Large 7 ½. V.
This source notes that Count Brühl acquired the painting from the Electorof Bavaria; that it is rightly called a masterpiece; that it was engraved by
Pierre Etienne Moitte in Paris; and that it was painted in 1664.[16] Although
no date now appears on the painting, the composition and execution are
most directly comparable to Dou’s Poulterer’s Shop in the National
Gallery, London, dating to around 1665–70 (fig 3).[17] A date of around
1664 for the Herring Seller and Boy, which is mentioned in Munich’s
catalogue, is therefore most likely.
The Leiden Collection painting is not the sole representation of the subjectof a herring seller in Dou’s art, though it is the most elaborate and the only
one that shows the shopkeeper buying rather than selling fish. TheHerring
Seller in the Pushkin from about 1650–55 (fig 4) depicts only two
figures.[18] They are placed close to the picture plane, standing next toeach other in a window. The young boy in a broad-brimmed hat grasps thefish tub and points into it while looking at the old woman. She, in turn,displays a herring with one hand and holds the other palm outward, as
though expecting payment. Onions, herring’s traditional accompaniment,
are the only still-life elements on the window sill. Dou’s other rendition of
the theme, now in the Hermitage (fig 5), is a late work, dating about
1670–75.[19] Here, an old woman and a beret-wearing boy, placed much
farther back in space, are joined by a snarling dog splayed on the window
ledge. This painting, which also includes the basket of eggs, scales,
tattered cloth, and tub of herring found in the Leiden Collection picture,
actually depicts the boy paying the woman for the herring she holds.
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Although not conceived as a series, these three compositions featuring atransaction between an old woman and a boy around a herring show three
distinct episodes—delivering, choosing, and paying for herring—threepictorial solutions, and three moments in the artist’s career.
Dou’s Herring Seller and Boy appears to have been a very popular
composition, much more so than the other two related images.[20] Sometwenty-three versions and copies of the work are known. Moitte’s mideighteenth-century engraving of the painting, made when it was in thecollection of Count Brühl, was evidently used as the model for those copiesof the painting that reproduce the subject in reverse.[21]- Ronni Baer

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Endnotes
1. Herring was extremely important to the Dutch economy of the seventeenth century both as
an export industry and for local consumption. It was used creatively as a subject by Dutch
artists, serving, for example, as the interpretive pivot of a still life by Joseph de Bray In(
Praise of Pickled Herring, 1656, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden) and a portrait by Frans Hals
(Portrait of Pieter Cornelisz van der Morsch , 1616, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh);
further, P. J. J. van Thiel, “Frans Hals’ portret van de Leidese rederijkersnar Pieter
Cornelisz. van der Morsch, alias Piero,” Oud Holland 76 [1961]: 153–72). Dou’s genre
paintings featuring herring likely inspired artists with Leiden connections, such as Gabriel
Metsu, Godefridus Schalcken, and Quiringh van Brekelenkam, to treat the theme as well.
2. E-mail correspondence from Marieke de Winkel to the author, 13 August 2012. His clothingis comparable to that worn by Frans Hals’s fisherboys. Furthermore, a similar hat is worn by
the boy with a pipe who appears behind the fish seller in Jan Steen’s Old Man Selling Fish in
Bridgewater House (Franklin Robinson, Gabriel Metsu: A Study of His Place in Dutch
Genre Painting of the Golden Age [New York, 1974], fig. 90) and by the old mussel man in
Hendrick Sorgh’s Fish Market in the Rijksmuseum (Liesbeth M. Helmus, ed.,Fish: Still Lifes
by Dutch and Flemish Masters [Exh. cat. Utrecht, Centraal Museum; Helsinki, Amos
Anderson Art Museum] [Utrecht, 2004], no. 60).
3. There is no indication of a monetary transaction; it is therefore highly unlikely that he wants a
herring. The wooden vessel to which he gestures contains a clearly delineated herring aswell as painted dots of white, reddish-taupe, and gray, implying the glistening skins of others.
Such vessels were used not only to keep fish alive for some time but also as a measure; see
Eddy de Jongh, “The Symbolism of Fish, Fisherman, Fishing Gear, and the Catch,” inFish:
Still Lifes by Dutch and Flemish Masters , ed. Liesbeth M. Helmus (Exh. cat. Utrecht,
Centraal Museum; Helsinki, Amos Anderson Art Museum) (Utrecht, 2004), 333.
4. See Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1990), no. 58 (the old woman with a basket listening toThe Quack); no 94 (Old
Woman with a Jug at a Window); no. 98 (the old woman who brings the urine sample toThe
Doctor in Copenhagen).
5. Elizabeth Honig, “Quirijn Gerritsz. van Brekelenkam, De Visverkoopster,” in Leidse
Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 , ed. Eric J. Sluijter,
Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Nieuwenhuizen (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal)(Zwolle, 1988), no. 2.
6. For this expression, see P. J. J. van Thiel, “Frans Hals’ portret van de Leidese rederijkersnar
Pieter Cornelisz. van der Morsch, alias Piero,” Oud Holland 76 (1961): 153–72.
7. He also seems to have changed the shape of the old woman’s outer sleeve and the position© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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of the tankard in the right background. Infrared reflectography reveals broad blocking-in
strokes, especially in the old woman’s apron. I am grateful to Annette Rupprecht for
discussing the results of her 2012 technical examination of the Leiden Collection painting
with me. These findings shed light on the artist’s working method, which is importantconsidering that no compositional drawings by Dou are known. For more on Dou’s working
methods, see Ronni Baer, “The Life and Art of Gerrit Dou,” in 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), 39–40; Annetje Boersma, “Dou’s Painting Technique,” in Gerrit
Dou, 1613–1675: Master Painter in the Age of Rembrandt (Exh. cat. Washington D.C.,
National Gallery of Art; London, Dulwich Picture Gallery; The Hague, Mauritshuis)(Washington D.C., 2000), 54–63; Jørgen Wadum, “Dou Doesn’t Paint, Oh No, He Juggles
with His Brush: Gerrit Dou, a Rembrandtesque ‘Fijnschilder,’” Art Matters: Nederlands
Technical Studies in Art 1 (2002): 62–77; Ronni Baer, “A Dou for Boston,” in Collected
Opinions: Essays on Netherlandish Art in Honour of Alfred Bader , ed. V. Manuth and A.
Rüger (London, 2004), 21–22.
8. The same combination of lighting—spotlight for the foreground figure and light from anadjacent window for the background—occurs first in Dou’s painting Woman with Fruit, dated
1657, at Waddesdon Manor (Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou [1613–1675],” 3 vols.
[Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1990], no. 70). In the Leiden Collection painting, however,the soft atmospheric effect of the second light source may reflect Dou’s awareness ofcontemporary artistic production in Delft, especially that of De Hooch and Vermeer. See
further Ronni Baer, “Dou and the Delft Connection,” in Face Book: Studies on Dutch
Portraiture of the Sixteenth–Eighteenth Centuries. Liber Amicorum for Rudi Ekkart (Leiden
and The Hague, 2012), 279–84.
9. Eric Jan Sluijter (“Gerrit Dou, Vioolspeler,” in Leidse Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot Frans
van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 , ed. Eric J. Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul
Nieuwenhuizen [Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal] [Zwolle, 1988], no. 10, n.
3) noted the resemblance of Dou’s “windows” to Amman’s illustrations of the trades andremarked that Amman’s series would have been known and appreciated—given Jan Jorisz
van Vliet’s early seventeenth-century print series of the trades—in Dou’s Leiden artistic
circles. Amman’s pharmacist (20), whose confections and remedies in canisters of different
sizes and shapes line the wall of his shop, is most pertinent to this discussion (see Figure 1).
10. Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1990), no. 47.
11. The marked contrast between the figures in the foreground and background, as well as thedramatic lighting and frozen action, may indicate a connection to contemporary rederijker
theater, in which the protagonist delivered his soliloquy from the apron while the action took
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place behind him on the stage. See Stephanie Sonntag, Ein “Schau-spiel” der Malkunst:
Das Fensterbild in der holländischen Malerei des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 2006),
229–34. I do not agree, however, with Sonntag’s assessment (163–64) that this painting has
sexual connotations.
12. A. C. J. de Vrankrijker, Mensen, leven en werken in de Gouden Eeuw (The Hague, 1981),
79; “Frans van Mieris de Jonge, De apotheek,” in Leidse Fijnschilders: Van Gerrit Dou tot
Frans van Mieris de Jonge, 1630–1760 , ed. Eric J. Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul
Nieuwenhuizen (Exh. cat. Leiden, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal) (Zwolle, 1988), no. 31.
13. The citizens of Dou’s hometown of Leiden were especially proud of their fish market, locatedbehind the city hall on the quays of the Nieuwe Rijn. The town chronicler, Jan Orlers,
described how the fish were brought there “frequently with such number and abundance that
it is a delight to behold”; Beschrijving der Stadt Leyden (Leiden and Delft, 1641), 275.
According to Bianca du Mortier, “eighty-one percent of the stallholders in the [Leiden] fish
market were women, and this figure rose to 96 percent in the Penshal, a market where meatproducts such as bacon, sausages, and salt meat were sold”; “Costumes in Gabriel Metsu’s
Paintings,” in Gabriel Metsu: Rediscovered Master of the Dutch Golden Age , ed. Adriaan E.
Waiboer (Exh. cat. Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum;Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art) (New Haven, 2010), 140. In early modern Leiden,
the permits for stall holding or street vending were issued by the city government, often incooperation with the guild that governed the particular trade; see Danielle van den Heuvel,
Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in the Northern Netherlands, c. 1580–1815(Amsterdam, 2007), 92-3. According to Van den Heuvel, as opposed to the sale of textiles or
hardware, the sale of meat, fish, and vegetables in the seventeenth century stayed in themarketplace and did not transfer to shops. This is corroborated by Jan de Vries, whoreported that retail shops gained widespread acceptance only by about 1700, at which timethey supplemented markets and hawkers and peddlers; The Economy of Europe in an Ageof Crisis, 1600–1750 (Cambridge, MA, 1976), 187.
14. Danielle van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in the Northern
Netherlands, c. 1580–1815 (Amsterdam, 2007), 149.
15. Historians disagree about the predominant marital status of these female shopkeepers. Vanden Heuvel remarks that “Van Deursen argues that they were mainly widows, Wijsenbeek
suggests that the majority of [these] women were single, and Van Nierop, De Vries and Van
der Woude, and Vos classify it as a trade that was (also) very often practised by married
women.” Danielle van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship: Female Traders in the
Northern Netherlands, c. 1580–1815 (Amsterdam, 2007), 137 n. 3.
16. This handwritten catalogue is housed in The Hermitage. I am indebted to Irina Sokolova forthis information.
17. Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Herring Seller and Boy
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University, 1990), no. 117.
18. Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1990), no. 60.
19. Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675),” 3 vols. (Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1990), no. 126.
20. It would be interesting to explore whether there is a correlation between those of Dou’s
paintings that were reproduced in print and those of his paintings that are known innumerous copies. Not every painting of which a print was made is known in numerous
copies, but there are many versions and copies of Violinist in the Liechtenstein Princely
Collections (Ronni Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou [1613–1675],” 3 vols. [Ph.D. diss.,
New York University, 1990], no. 63) and Old Woman Watering Flowers in Vienna (Ronni
Baer, “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou [1613–1675],” 3 vols. [Ph.D. diss., New York University,
1990], no. 94), both of which were known through prints.
21. Although the print was published in Dresden, Moitte executed the engraving in Paris. See
Vivian Lee Atwater, “A Catalogue and Analysis of Eighteenth-Century French Prints after
Netherlandish Baroque Paintings” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1988), 656 (no.
358).

Provenance
Probably Maximilian II Emanuel (1679–1726), Elector of Bavaria.
Count Heinrich von Brühl (1700–69?), Chancellor of Saxony, by 1750.
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia (1729–96), by 1769.
By gift to Count Vladimir Grigorievich Orlov (1743–1831); by descent to his grandson Count
Vladimir Petrovich Orlov-Davydov (1809–82); by descent to his grandson Count Anatoli
Vladimirovich Orlov-Davydov, St. Petersburg, by 1913 [Count Orloff Davidoff, Petrograd].
Henry Blank, Newark, by 1929, until 1940s.
Sidney van den Bergh, Wassenaar, by 1952.
Charles Napper (1910–72), London; [to Duits & Co., Ltd. London, for £8,500; to Robert
Edgar, April 1961, for £9,000].
Private collection (Robert Edgar), England; (sale, London, Christie’s, 6 July 2005, no. 93 (asby follower of Dou), withdrawn; sale, London, Christie’s, 6 July 2006, no. 7 [Johnny van
Haeften, London, 2006]).
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

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Exhibition History
Detroit Institute of Arts, “Dutch Genre and Landscape Paintings of the SeventeenthCentury,” 16 October–10 November 1929, no. 21 [lent by Mr. Henry Blank, Newark].
Delft, Museum het Prinsenhof, “Kersttentoonstelling, Nederlandse meesters uit particulier
bezit,” 21 December 1952–1 February 1953, no. 21 [lent by Sidney van den Bergh].
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 the present owner].
Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal, “Gerrit Dou: The Leiden Collection from New York,” 9March–31 August 2014 [lent by the present owner].
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection, September
2014–May 2016 [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 [lentby the present owner].

References
Von Munich, E. Catalogue des tableaux qui se trouve dans les Galeries et dans les
Cabinets du Palais Imperial de St-Pétersbourg . St. Petersburg, 1774, no. 534 [unpublishedhandwritten inventory housed at The Hermitage].
Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish, andFrench Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829–42, 1:9, no. 24.
Martin, Wilhelm. Het Leven en de Werken van Gerrit Dou. Leiden, 1901, 222, no. 256a.
Martin, Wilhelm. Gerard Dou. London, 1902, 140, no. 186.
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 and© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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Paris, 1907–28. 1:412, no. 194.
Martin, Wilhelm. Gerard Dou, des Meisters Gemälde. Klassiker der Kunst. Stuttgart andBerlin, 1913, 129.
Dutch Genre and Landscape Paintings of the Seventeenth Century.

Exh. cat. Detroit

Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1929, xiii, no. 21.
“Dutch Genre and Landscape Painting.” American Magazine of Art 20 (December 1929):
696.
Heil, W. “Zwei amerikanische Ausstellungen.” Pantheon 5 (1930): 34.
Kersttentoonstelling, Nederlandse meesters uit particulier bezit. Exh. cat. Delft, Museum het
Prinsenhof. Delft, 1952, 14–15, no. 21.
Baer, Ronni. “The Paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613–1675).” 3 vols. Ph.D. diss., New York
University, 1990, Appendix A, untraced works of undetermined attribution.
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): 2–5, 12, 18–19, figs. 13a, 13b, 30, 46.

Versions
Engraved
1. Pierre-Étienne Moitte (1722–80), La marchande hollandaise (plate 22 from “Recueild’estampes gravées d’après les tableaux de la galerie de S. E. M. le Comte de Brühl”), ca.
1754, engraving, 5.14 x 3.5 cm, British Museum, London.

Versions and Copies
1. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy , oil on copper, 40.6 x 30.5 cm, signed G. Dou,
Chatsworth, Collection of the Duke of Devonshire.

2. After Gerrit Dou, The Fishwife, oil on canvas, 45.7 x 35.4 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Johnson Collection, no. 548, inv. 1879.

3. Attributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten, A Herring Woman and a Boy , oil on panel, 17 ¼ x 14
½ inches, whereabouts unknown (formerly Barbier Collection, Brussels).

4. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy , London, private collection, possibly equivalent
to Version 1.

5. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy , oil on panel, 42.5 x 33.5 cm, whereabouts
unknown (formerly in a private collection, Düsseldorf).
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Herring Seller and Boy
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6. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy , inscribed “G Dow” lower right, support
unknown, whereabouts unknown (formerly or still in the Biss Collection, Cardiff).

7. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy , signed “G Douw 1665” lower right, oil on
panel, 44.2 x 34.5 cm, Wawel Castle, Kraków, inv. no. 946.

8. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy , signed and dated “G. Dou 1671,” oil on
copper, 45 x 34 cm (formerly in the Hommel Collection, Zurich).

9. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, oil on copper, 44 x 35 cm, whereabouts
unknown (formerly sale, Vienna, Dorotheum, no date, no. 799).

10. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, oil on panel, 46 x 35.5 cm, whereabouts
unknown (formerly sale, London, Sotheby’s, 6 July 1994, no. 188).

11. Attributed to P. van Slingeland, The Herring Seller and Boy, oil on canvas, 45 x 36 cm,
whereabouts unknown (formerly with T. Hermsen, The Hague, 1936).

12. Attributed to Dominicus van Tol, The Herring Seller and Boy, oil on panel, 47 x 36 cm,
whereabouts unknown (formerly sale, Van Marle & Bignell, The Hague, 28 April 1942, no.
249).

13. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, support unknown, whereabouts unknown.
14. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, support unknown, whereabouts unknown.
15. After Gerrit Dou attributed to the School of Frans van Mieris the Elder,The Herring Seller
and Boy, oil on canvas, 38 x 48 cm, whereabouts unknown.

16. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, 45 x 37 cm, whereabouts unknown.
17. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, support unknown, whereabouts unknown.
18. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, oil on panel, 34.5 x 25.5 cm, signed,
whereabouts unknown (formerly Wilms Collection, 1961).

19. After Gerrit Dou, The Herring Seller and Boy, oil on canvas, dated 1684, whereabouts
unknown (formerly W. M. de Vries, Aalst, North Brabant, 1973).

20. After Gerrit Dou, The Shop Window, oil on panel, 47 x 36 cm, signed, whereabouts
unknown (formerly sale, Glerum, Amsterdam, 9 November 1998, no. 63).

21. Attributed to G. Marsellli, A Fish and Vegetable Seller at a Niche , signed “G. Marselli,” oil on
panel, 45.8 x 37.5 cm, whereabouts unknown (formerly sale, London, Christie’s, 26
September 1996, no. 170).

22. After Gerrit Dou, An Old Woman Offering Herring to a Youth at a Niche, oil on panel, 50 x
38.5 cm, whereabouts unknown (formerly sale, Christie’s, Amsterdam, 8 October 1994, no.
10).

23. After Gerrit Dou, An Old Woman Offering Herring to a Youth at a Niche, oil on panel, 50 x
38.5 cm, whereabouts unknown (formerly sale, Christie’s, Amsterdam, 8 October 1994, no.
10).
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Herring Seller and Boy
Page 15 of 15

Versions Notes

Technical Summary
The support is a vertically grained wood panel made from a single plank. When viewed from thefront, the thickness of the panel tapers from 0.8 cm on the left to 0.4 cm on the right. The back of
the panel has been beveled on the top, bottom, and thicker left side. It appears that the thinner
right edge was never beveled. The panel has a very slight convex warp when viewed from thefront. Narrow wooden strips have been attached to all four edges. On the left and right sides, thegrain of the strips is vertical, but on the top and bottom the grain is horizontal.
The white ground was thinly and evenly applied. In the X-radiograph it is radio-opaque and it
accentuates the woodgrain. The paint has been built up in successive thin layers of light overdark. It was applied thinly and smoothly wet-into-wet. Infrared photographs[1] and the Xradiograph show several artist’s changes. The positions of the two figures in the backgroundwere adjusted slightly; the folds of the herring seller’s skirt were changed and her proper left
sleeve was originally larger and more angular; and there was a bell-shaped object below thescale hanging on the right side of the niche. In addition, a pentimento and a corresponding shapein the X-radiograph just below the artist’s signature indicate that the signature was originally
depicted on a painted piece of paper with the upper corners curled down.
The painting is in good condition, though the paint bears a pronounced craquelure pattern.
Drying cracks in the background inside the arch make this area difficult to read. There is also
some shrinkage in the paint in patches along the left side of the arch and below the signature.
There is a loss to the ground and paint in the upper left corner and a depression in the paint at
the top of the arch.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Infrared photographs were taken at 780, 850, and 1000 nm.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection