Artists such as Frans Hals and Rembrandt, and even Vermeer, were keen to show off their virtuoso handling of paint by using clearly visible brushstrokes. It is therefore somewhat paradoxical that one of Rembrandt’s most successful pupils, Gerrit Dou, initiated an entirely different style of painting.
Dou's aim was to achieve an almost enamel-like surface, where brushstrokes were carefully blended so as not to be seen at all. He seems to have reasoned that if a picture was to be lifelike then the process of its making should become invisible.
According to Dou, the individuality of artists could be expressed in their choice of subject matter and use of certain motifs, but not in their brushwork. Dou’s pictures proved popular, and artists such as Frans van Mieris, Godfried Schalcken and many others followed his example. Collectively they are referred to in Dutch as fijnschilders (fine painters).
Room 15a
'Fine Painters'
Paintings in this room
The languid brown eyes of a young man gaze out at us, his look faintly quizzical. But who is he? His long hair waves softly about his neck, the shadow of a moustache dusts his upper lip, a wisp of a curl brushes a wide brow, and his full mouth pouts a little, adding to the uncertainty of his exp...
A finely dressed young woman gazes assuredly out at the viewer. The distinct shape of her nose, the turn of her mouth and her faintly dimpled chin reveal that this is a portrait, though the sitter’s identity is unknown. She is shown in the guise of Saint Agnes, with the saint’s attributes of a la...
This is one of the best examples of Gerrit Dou’s brilliance at depicting different surfaces and textures, like the fraying cloth crumpled underneath a bucket, the smooth stone of the sill, the feathers in the duck’s wing and the pocked skin of its breast and neck.Dou was one of the most successfu...
In this tiny portrait, an affable young man turns towards us, settling his elbow over the back of his chair. His pipe is paused and he meets our gaze with an easy, relaxed look. Perhaps he has just taken a puff; the tobacco is glowing and smoke twists upwards from the bowl. Other minute details –...
This painting has in the past been described as a portrait of the painter’s wife, but we now know Gerrit Dou never married. Perhaps it was something about the intimacy and sensitivity of this tiny image which led people to assume that there was a relationship between the artist and the sitter.Tho...
A young woman sits, one delicate hand outstretched and holding an almond to feed to a parrot. On one finger she has a thimble – she has stopped sewing to feed the bird, an African Grey that hunches over, assessing her gift with a beady eye. The model used for the young woman is thought to be Cune...
Cunera van der Cock married the artist Frans van Mieris about a year before he painted this portrait of her. About 120 of his pictures still exist, but although Cunera appears in about a quarter of them, very few are actual portraits of her. The rest are genre paintings in which she is playing a...
Frans van Mieris painted this tiny self portrait three days before he turned 39 in 1674. By this time, he was highly successful. His work was bought, sometimes for vast sums, by nobility from abroad, including the Medici, the ruling family of Florence. Perhaps for this reason, van Mieris chose to...
Willem van Mieris belonged to a group of Dutch artists based in Leiden who are known as the Fijnschilders (‘fine painters’) because of their attention to accurate, realistic detail and their smooth technique. They aimed to show each object, each texture so authentically that they would seem tangi...
A velvet curtain drawn back from a stone window reveals a little boy, who gazes upwards at a bubble floating past him and into the darkness. In the shadows behind, a smaller child concentrates equally fiercely. Using a long pipe he blows bubbles in the soapy liquid held in a cockle shell. Already...
A man offers gold coins and jewellery to woman lying on a bed – a carving of Cupid, the god of erotic love, on the bedpost in the foreground removes any doubt that it is an amorous encounter. The glass of wine would also have been associated with licentious behaviour. Whether this is a transactio...
A small, beady-eyed sparrow on one side of a set of scales heavily outweighs the gold and pearls which a weeping woman, two tears glistening on her cheeks, places in the other. Clearly, in the real word, this couldn't happen: the bird would be much the lighter than the jewellery. But this picture...
This painting evokes a sense of the calm and simplicity of everyday routine and of the virtue of labour as the old woman absorbs herself in polishing the glowing brass of a large pan. But other objects on the sill give her scouring a different, darker significance and clearly identify the picture...
A boy sits in a dark room, but a glimmer of light through the window reveals his face and the dead mouse he holds in one hand. The other hand covers the mousetrap. This is not a portrait but an imaginary situation, intended as an entertainment and, possibly, a moral lesson.The boy lifts his chin...