Gerard Dou (The Netherlands 1613‑1675)

A young girl at a window ledge…

To be sold at Uppsala Auktionskammare’s Important Sale Week 10 – 13 June 2025

Lot 609 Gerard Dou (The Netherlands 1613‑1675). A young girl at a window ledge holding a cat and a mouse-trap, a hung duck and a pewter ewer beside her. With signature (strengthened) GDOV lower center. Oil on panel with later additions, 32.5 x 24.5 cm.

The size of the original inserted panel with an arched top is 28 x 16.5 cm.

Estimate

400.000 – 500.000 SEK
€ 37.000 – 46.000

Provenance

Comte de Merle, Paris.
His sale, Paris, Paillet/Juillot, 1 March 1784, lot 77, for 900 Francs.
Chevalier Sébastien Erard (1752‑1831), Château de la Muette, Bois de Boulogne, Paris.
His deceased sale, Paris, Lacoste, 23 April 1832, lot 78.
Sir Edward Page-Turner, Battlesden House, Preston Park, Brighton.
Lady Page-Turner, Battlesden House, Brighton.
Her deceased sale, Christie’s, London, 21 February 1903, lot 19.
Dr Jules Porgès (1839‑1921), Paris, 1906.
Banker and art collector Baron Maximilian von Goldschmidt-Rothschild (1843‑1940), Frankfurt, by 1913.
Alexander Oppler (1869‑1937), Grünewald (according to the label on the reverse).
Samuel van den Bergh, Wassenaar (confiscated by German forces in May 1940 and removed to Germany in 1944).
Frederick Mont (1894‑1994), New York, 1950.
With Newhouse Galleries, New York.
The collection of Walter Percy Chrysler Jr. (1909-1988), New York, 1951.
With Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, acquired by the previous owner in 1965.
Sotheby’s, London, 3 July 2013, lot 13.

Exhibited

Stedelijk Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden, ”Rembrandt-hulde te Leiden”, 15 July-15 September 1906, no. 11, reproduced in the catalogue.
Dutch Exhibition, Paris, 1911.
University of Miami Art Gallery, Coral Gables (Florida), ”Dutch Old Masters, Part II from the collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.”,
6 February- 9 March 1951, no. 20, reproduced in the catalogue.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (Virginia), ”Dutch and Flemish Paintings from the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.”,
19 October- 25 November 1951.
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (Virginia), ”The Little Masters. Paintings by Artists of the Netherlands and Belgium from
the Collection of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.”, 13 October 1953‑11 May 1955, pp. 13‑14 in the catalogue, reproduced in colour on the cover.
Kunsthandel P. de Boer, Amsterdam, spring 1965, no. 22.

Literature

John Smith, A catalogue raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch, Flemish, and French painters: in which is included a short biographical notice of the artists […], 1829, vol. I, p. 21, no. 62 (as oil on panel, 12 by 9 in., as dated 1645).
Wilhelm Martin, Het leven en de werken van Gerrit Dou beschouwd in verband met het schildersleven van zijn tijd, thesis, Leiden 1901.
Alfred von Wurzbach, Niederländisches Künstler-Lexikon, 1906, p. 417.
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the works of the most eminent Dutch painters of the seventeenth century based on the work of John Smith, 1908, vol. I, p. 401, no. 164 (as dated 1645).
Wilhelm Martin, Gerard Dou, sa Vie et Son Oeuvre, trans. by L. Dimier, 1911, p. 182, no. 116.
Wilhelm Martin, Des Meisters Gemälde. Gerrit Dou (Klassiker der Kunst), 1913, pp. 195‑6, reproduced p. 113 (dated to ca. 1670‑75).
Ronni Baer, The paintings of Gerrit Dou (1613‑1675), doctoral dissertation, New York University, 1990, cat. no. C72 (under Works of Rejected Attribution).
Eddy de Jongh, Erotica in vogelperspectief. De dubbelzinnigheid van een reeks zeventiende-eeuwse genrevoorstellingen, in: Simiolus, vol. 3, 1968‑69; republished as a collection of essays in Eddy de Jongh, Kwesties van betekenis. Thema en motief in de Nederlandse schilderkunst van de zeventiende eeuw, 1995, pp. 40‑41, reproduced fig. 25 (translated into English, edited by M. Hoyle, 2000).

A pupil of Rembrandt’s for three years, Gerard (Gerrit) Dou was the most famous member of the group of artists known as the Leiden Fine Painters (Fijnschilders). He executed small-scale paintings characterised by an extremely meticulous technique and an ability to achieve extraordinary illusionistic effects. Dou enjoyed a great reputation in his native Holland and across Europe among both his contemporaries and later generations and his paintings commanded prices second only to Rembrandt.

Although Dou depicted everyday scenes of the Dutch bourgeoisie, his works are often imbued with symbolic content usually derived from contemporary didactic and moralizing tales, whose meaning would have been clear to a 17th century audience. In the present painting, several elements can be interpreted symbolically, as proposed by Eddy de Jongh in his essay from 1968‑9. De Jongh suggests, for example, that the cat and mouse trap allude to captive love, while the open ewer resting on its side may perhaps symbolise the uterus. The erotic overtones are further underscored by the lascivious expression of the woman. The use of a trompe l’oeil bas relief in the composition recurs in other works by the artist, such as ”The Violin Player” (Liechtenstein, Princely Collections) and ”A Poulterer’s Shop” (National Gallery, London), which both feature a scene of putti playing with a goat.

Dou’s original panel consisted of the stone window frame with the scene within and the arch with the trompe l’oeil scene above. At some point in the first quarter of the 19th century, it was probably inserted into a larger panel since Smith described it in 1829 as with the window being “adorned with ivy”. At the time of the Sotheby’s sale in 2013, Dr Ronni Baer confirmed the attribution of the central section of the panel to Dou after examining it in the original, thereby reversing her earlier opinion (expressed on the basis of a black and white photo) and concurring with De Jongh and all earlier scholars.
The painting once belonged to Chevalier Sébastien Erard (1752‑1831), who in 1820 acquired one wing of the Château de la Muette, a historically important building on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Formerly a royal hunting lodge, the château was turned into a palace by Henri II for his daughter Marguerite de Valois. In the 18th century Louis XV used it to entertain his mistresses, among them Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry.  ■

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