© 2020 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 Atelier

1657
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,

2nd

ed.

EditedbyArthurK.

Wheelock

Jr.

New

York,

2017–20.

https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/cat-crouching-on-the-ledge-of-an-artists-atelier/ (archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

Gerrit Dou, consummate master of artifice, was renowned for the illusionismof 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 aframing device and an illusionistic construct. Dou not only situated theseniches at the very front of the picture plane, but he also placed pictorial
elements, like the tail of the cat in this picture, so that they extended into theviewer’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 theniche, generally from the upper left. The niche motif, thus, allowed Dou to
examine issues of reality and illusionism that were central to his artistic

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

concerns, ones that he reinforced in the meticulous rendering of different
materials and textures, ranging from hard stone to soft fur.
In this striking painting Dou portrayed a grey-and-white-striped cat crouchingin profile on a stone niche opening into an artist’s studio, a subject that is© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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unique in the artist’s oeuvre.[2] The cat’s individualized character and thespecificity of the portrayal suggest that it was modeled after aparticular animal.[3] Using a brush consisting of only a few bristles, Dou
applied countless minuscule strokes of multicolored paint to create the cat’splush 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 reflectogramFig 2. X-radiograph of Cat
Crouching on the Ledge of an
Artist’s Atelier, GD-108

reveals a small rectangular shape in the lower right corner of the windowsillthat may have been a mousetrap [(fig 4) and (fig 5)].[5] Technicalphotographs also suggest that the niche once extended beyond the upper
and right edges of the panel, suggesting that Dou initially began painting ona larger panel that he later reduced in format. This idea is reinforced by thefact that only a single bevel is found on the reverse of the panel, by which
one can infer that the panel has been trimmed down on the other threesides.[6]Other composition changes may also have occurred. The X-radiograph andinfrared photograph indicate that a curtain was initially gathered about twothirds 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 werepart of a preliminary stage of the final composition or belonged to an earlier,Fig 3. X-radiograph of Cat
Crouching on the Ledge of an
Artist’s Atelier, GD-108, with X-ray
superimposed in registration withthe visual image (composite: John
Twilley)

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 date from about the same year, they both portraya crouching feline in profile. Although Dou may have known of this print andit may have inspired his painting, a direct connection 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

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

iconographic tradition than that of Visscher’s engraving, one that stems fromthe animal’s reputation for extraordinary vision. This attribute was often© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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exploited by late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century artists in their
depictions of the Allegory of Sight (Visus).[11] An engraving from 1595, Senseof 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 bosom (fig 9).[12] This
aspect of sight is further expressed by the poignant gaze of the feline
crouching next to Adam and Eve in Hendrick Golztius’s Fall of Man in the
National Gallery of Art, Washington (fig 10).[13] Reinterpreted here with thefamiliarity and immediacy of daily life, Dou emphasizes the cat as theembodiment of sight by highlighting its intense gaze and alert demeanor.

Fig 5. Detail of infrared
reflectogram of Cat Crouching on
the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier,
GD-108, showing silhouette ofwhat appears to be a mousetrap in
the lower right corner

As in many of his other niche scenes, Dou also includes a scene in the deep
recesses of 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 backgrounds of his paintings, nowhere else does hedepict 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 their works ofart.[15]
The prominent red curtain, beautifully depicted with subtle violet highlights
shimmering in the cascading of light across the iridescent fabric, also relates
to the painting’s underlying concern for the interrelationship of illusion andreality. The depiction of such a dazzling curtain evokes the famous story

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

from classical antiquity of 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 by seventeenth-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 wasoften praised for his convincing illusionism by contemporaries like the poet
Dirck Traudenius, who referred to Dou in 1662 as the “Dutch Parrhasius.”
The question remains as to why Dou turned his iconographic focus from afigural group involving a cat, a mousetrap, and young woman to a simplified
scene of a cat alone 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 the composition, Dou may have intended to explore theFig 7. Infrared photographsuperimposed on X-radiographwith inverted density grayscale of
Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an
Artist’s
Atelier, GD-108 (composite: John
Twilley)© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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symbolism of love’s entrapment.[19] The earlier compositional idea relates topaintings Dou made somewhat earlier in the 1650s, such as Kitchen Scenein Copenhagen, Statens Museum for Kunst, or The Mousetrap in Montpellier,
Musée Fabre (fig 12).[20] Dou’s final image emphasizing the cat’s sense ofsight 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 early eighteenth century for the imperial housecollections of the Royal Palace in Dresden, where it remained, with nineteen

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

other autograph paintings by Dou, until the third decade of the twentiethcentury.[22] In the 1920s the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden de-accessioned thepainting, and handed the work over to the former Royal House of Wettin aspart 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.

- Domique Surh, 2017
Fig 9. Jan Saenredam, after
Hendrick Goltzius, Sight, ca.
1595–96, engraving, 177 x 124
mm, Rijksprentenkabinet,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, RPP-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’
Permanent Fund, 1996.34.1© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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

Fig 12. Gerrit Dou, The
Mousetrap, ca. 1650, oil on panel,
47 x 36 cm, Musée Fabre,
Montpellier, © Musée Fabre —Montpellier Agglomération / cliché
F. Jaulmes© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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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 and Marketing Strategy,” Athanor 25 (2007): 59–67.
2. Felis silvestris catus descends from the wildcat. See Luke Hunter, Carnivores of theWorld (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 der Geschickte der Malerei und deren Kunstkritik / Allen
Jüngern und Freunden der Kunst nach der Ordnung der Räume beschreibend und erläuterndvorgefürht 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 that when 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 andwas shown leaning forward to pour from a jug. 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 inpaintings of the period, 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, “OfCats 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 merelyplanned. See Dominique Surh, Ilona van Tuinen, and John Twilley, “Insights from TechnicalAnalysis 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© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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modifications to the composition, 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,” JHNA6, no. 1 (Winter 2014): DOI:10.5092/jhna.2014.6.1.3. Arthur Wheelock(verbal communication with Dominique Surh) has questioned this conclusion since noevidence 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 andmeanings. 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 andInvention 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 a reference to the Allegory of Sight. See Eric Jan Sluijter, “Venus, Visus, andPictura,” in Seductress of Sight: 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 theseventeenth 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 andDou,” 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 ofSaenredam’s Sense of Sight reads: “Dum male 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 isperhaps significant, since the word “lynx” comes from the Indo-European root of a word thatmeans “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 bylust, 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. SKA-129.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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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 Pipeand 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; Self-Portrait, ca. 1665, Van Otterloo Collection, Boston;Self-Portrait, ca. 1665, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Self-Portrait, ca. 1665–67,
Musée du Louvre, Paris. See Ronni Baer, Gerrit Dou 1613–1675: Master Painter in the Ageof 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), 70–71,
nos. 7, 14, 16, 20, 29; Walter Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of 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 the uniqueness of a scene of an artist actively painting, see Ronni Baer,“Of Cats and Dogs: Domestic Pets in 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 Competitionin Duquesnoy, Dou and Schalcken,” Simiolus 29 (2002): 184–201.
16. Eric Jan Sluijter, Marlies Enklaar, and Paul Niewenhuizen, eds. Leidse Fijnschilders: vanGerrit 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, “InPraise 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; 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) (Zwolle, 2000), 94–95, no. 16; andalso 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 (seeGD-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© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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painting with Adriaen van der Spelt (1630–73), A Trompe l’oeil with a Garland of Flowers anda Curtain, dated 1658 and now in the Art Institute of Chicago. See Ben Broos, “A Trompel’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 of 1642,” 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 andIllusions: 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 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 Haven and London, 2004), 122.
18. Cited in 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), 209, 332, n. 42.
19. The image of a cat watching a mousetrap was well-known in emblematic traditions. It first
appeared in Daniel 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 mouse inside a wooden trap, too frightened tocome 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” (Evilpursues 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 humanentrapment of love 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 and Bird, oil on panel, 21 x 17 cm.,
Karlsruhe, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe; Willem van Mieris (1662–1747) and Pieter© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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Cornelisz van Slingeland (1640–91), Dead Mouse, oil on panel, signed and dated 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 by Raschke, who was Prime-Commissar to King Augustus II, and lists GD-108
as “Ein Cipper Katze” under number “587.” This inventory number corresponds to theoriginal number that appears at the lower right of the painting in tan-colored paint. See also
Annegret Laabs and Christoph Scho?lzel, 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 und dem vormaligen Köningshause (Dresden, 9 August 1924), no. 37.

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 the present owner].
Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal, “Gerrit Dou: The Leiden Collection from New York,” 9March–31 August 2014 [lent by the present owner].
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, “An Eye For Detail: Dutch© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Cat Crouching on the Ledge of an Artist’s Atelier
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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 [lentby the present owner].
Moscow, The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, “The Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer:
Masterpieces of 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 thepresent owner].
Abu Dhabi, Louvre Abu Dhabi, “Rembrandt, Vermeer and the Dutch Golden Age.
Masterpieces from The Leiden Collection and the Musée du Louvre,” 14 February–18 May
2019 [lent by the present owner].

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 Verzeichnisse der 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.
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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,© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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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
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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,
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Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translatedby 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 and Paris, 1907–28.
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1912, 181, no. 1705. Originally published as Katalog der Königlichen Gemäldegalerie zu
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Invention in Netherlandish Art from 1500 to 1800: Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter. Editedby Anton W. A. Boschloo, Jacquelyn N. Coutré, Stephanie S. Dickey, and Nicolette C. SluijterSeijffert, 263–76. Zwolle, 2011.
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published in French and Arabic.]
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Technical Summary
The support is a vertically grained panel made from a single oak plank of Baltic origin. The woodcomes from a tree felled after 1588.[1] The panel is beveled only on the right edge, as viewed fromreverse. There are four overlapping circles inscribed in the reverse of the panel in the lower
quarter. The center of each is marked 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 alsothat 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 thin layers of light over dark. Infrared reflectography [3] and the x-radiographshow numerous compositional changes, which may be indicative of an entirely different
composition. Originally a young woman was depicted leaning forward in the lower right corner ofthe painting. Her proper right arm was bent as if she was pouring something. Just below thisfigure 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 a globe, 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 thepanel was originally larger.
The painting is in good condition. There are drying cracks in the dark brown shadows and there
are a few 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© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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an InGaAs camera with a bandpass filter.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection