The Paintings of Gerrit Dou - Tapa dura

Gerrit Dou, an early pupil of Rembrandt, was one of the most highly esteemed Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, celebrated for the extraordinarily sensitive images he created with his fine and delicate technique. This beautiful book assembles and discusses thirty-five of his finest paintings. Founder of the Leiden school of fijnschilders, or "fine painters", Dou had an international clientele and was lauded by the theorist Philips Angel in his 1642 treatise Lof der Schilderkonst as an artist worthy of the honour accorded the ancients. The book presents a wide range of subjects painted by Dou over the course of his career. These include portraiture, still life, and religious images as well as scenes of daily life - mothers with their children, painters in their studios, scholars, shopkeepers, schoolmasters, musicians, and astronomers. Many of these works incorporate symbolic elements that Dou used to reflect the complexity of life's moral and ethical dilemmas. This book is the catalogue for an exhibition of Dou's works at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from 16 April to 6 August 2000 and at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, from 6 September to 19 November 2000.

Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., is curator of northern baroque paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and author of both Vermeer and the Art of Painting (0 300 06239 7) and Johannes Vermeer: Exhibition catalogue (ISBN 0 300 06558 2). Ronni Baer is the Mrs. Russell W. Baker Curator of European Painting at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.