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 also from Peter Kouwhorn a painter on glass; but at the age of fifteen he became a disciple of Rembrandt. In that famous school he continued for three years; and then found himself qualified to study nature, the most unerring director.

From Rembrandt he learned the true principles of colouring, and obtained a complete knowledge of the chiaro-scuro; but to that knowledge he added a delicacy of pencil, and a patience in working up his colours to the highest degree of neatness, superior to any other master. He therefore was more pleased with those pictures of Rembrandt which were painted in his youth, than those by which he was distinguished in his more advanced age; because the first seemed finished with more care and attention, the latter with more boldness, freedom, and negligence, which was quite opposite to the taste of Douw. But although his manner appears so different from that of his master, yet it was to Rembrandt alone that he owed all that excellence in colouring by which he triumphed over all the 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 as perfect as nature itself, in respect to colour, freethness, 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 with many exact squares of fine silk. But the latter custom is disused, as the eye of a good artist seems a more competent rule, though the use of the former is still practiced by painters in miniature.

It is almost incredible what vast sums have been given and are given at this day for the pictures of Douw, even in his own country; as also in Italy and every polite polite part of Europe: for he was exceedingly curious in finishing them, and patiently assiduous beyond example. Of that patience Sandrart gives a strong proof in a circumstance which he mentions relative to this artist. He says, that having once, in company with Bamboccio, visited Gerhard Douw, they could not forbear to admire the prodigious neatness of a picture which he was then painting, in which they took particular notice of a broom; and expressing their surprise at the excessive neatness of the finishing that minute object, Douw told them he should spend three days more in working on that broom before he should account it entirely complete. In a family picture of Mrs Spiering, the same author observes, that the lady sat five days for the finishing one of her hands that leaned on an arm chair. For that reason not many would fit to him for their portraits; and he therefore indulged himself mostly in works of fancy, in which he could introduce objects of still life, and employ as much time on them as suited his own inclination. Houbraken testifies, that his great patron Mr Spiering allowed him a thousand guilders a-year, and paid beside whatever he demanded for his pictures, and 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 of his demand. This great master died in 1674, aged 61.

Douw appears incontestably to be the most wonderful in his finishing of all the Flemish masters. Everything that came from his pencil is precious, and his colouring hath exactly the true and the lovely tints of nature; nor do his colours appear tortured, nor is their vigour lessened by his patient pencil; for whatever pains he may have taken, there is no look of labour or stiffness; and his pictures are remarkable, not only for retaining their original lustre, but for having the same beautiful effect at a proper distance as they have when brought to the nearest view.

At Turin are several pictures by Gerhard Douw, wonderfully beautiful; especially one, of a doctor attending a sick woman, and surveying an urinal. The execution of that painting is astonishingly fine, and although the shadows appear a little too dark, the whole has an inexpressible effect. In the gallery at Florence there is a night-piece by candle light, which is exquisitely finished; and in the same apartment, a mountebank attended by a number of figures, which it seems impossible either sufficiently to commend or to describe.