DOUW, GERHARD, a celebrated painter, was born at Leyden in 1613, and received his first instructions in drawing and design from Bartholomew Dolendo, an engraver, and from Peter Kouwboorn, a painter on glass. At the age of fifteen he became a disciple of Rembrandt; and in that famous school he continued for three years.
From Rembrandt he learned the true principles of colouring, and obtained a complete knowledge of chiaroscuro; but to that knowledge he added a delicacy of pencil, and a patience in working up his colours to the highest degree of finish. He was more pleased with the early pictures of Rembrandt than with those by which he was distinguished in his more advanced age; because the first seemed finished with greater care and attention than his later works, which displayed more boldness, freedom, and negligence—a style that was quite contrary to the taste of Douw. But although the manner of Gerhard Douw appears so different from that of his master, yet it was to Rembrandt alone that he owed that excellence in colouring by which he triumphed over all the contemporary artists of his own country.
His pictures are usually of a small size, with figures so exquisitely touched, so transparent, so wonderfully delicate, as to excite astonishment as well as pleasure. He designed every object after nature, and with an exactness so singular, that each object appears a perfect transcript of nature in respect to colour, freshness, and force. His general manner of painting portraits was by the aid of a concave mirror, and sometimes by looking at the object through a frame crossed with many exact squares of fine silk thread. But this custom is now abandoned, as the eye of a good artist seems a more competent rule, though the use of the mirror is still practised by some painters in miniature.
It is almost incredible what sums have been given, and
are still given, for the pictures of Douw, both in his own and in other countries; for he was exceedingly careful in giving them the highest degree of finish, and patiently assiduous beyond example. Of that patience Sandrart gives a very strong proof in a circumstance which he mentions relative to this artist. Having once, in company with Bamboccio, visited Gerhard Douw, they could not forbear admiring the exquisite minuteness of a picture which he was then painting, and in particular noticed a broom, at the same time expressing their surprise at the excessive labour bestowed on such an unimportant object; upon which Douw told them he would spend three days more in working on that broom before he should consider it entirely complete. The same author relates that the wife of his great patron, M. Spiering, sat to Douw five days for the finishing of one of her hands. In consequence of his tedious style of painting, few persons would sit to Douw for their portraits; and he therefore devoted his labours chiefly to works of fancy, in which he could introduce objects of still life, and employ as much time on them as suited his own inclination. Houbraeken states that M. Spiering allowed him a thousand guilders a-year, and paid besides whatever he demanded for his pictures, having purchased some of them for their weight in silver; but Sandrart, with more probability, assures us that the thousand guilders a-year were paid to Gerhard on no other consideration than that the artist should give his benefactor the option of every picture he painted, for which he was immediately to receive the utmost he demanded. This celebrated painter died in 1674, aged sixty-one.