in which the genius of taking pains is always apparent. "He would
frequently," says Ireland, "paint six or seven days on a hand, and,
still more wonderful, twice the time on the handle of a broom.... The
minuteness of his performance so affected his sight that he wore
spectacles at the age of thirty."

Gerard Dou's success was not only artistic; it was also
financial. Rembrandt's prices did not compare with those of his pupil,
whose art coming more within the sympathetic range and understanding
of the ordinary man naturally was more sought after than the Titanic
and less comfortable canvasses of the greater craftsman.

Dou did exceedingly well, one of his patrons even paying him a
yearly honorarium of a thousand florins for the privilege of having
the refusal of each new picture. "The Poulterer's Shop" at our
National Gallery is a perfect example of his fastidious minuteness
and charm. But he painted pictures also with a tenderer brush. I give
on the opposite page a reproduction of the most charming picture by
Gerard Dou that I know--"The Young Housekeeper" at The Hague. This
is a very miracle of painting in every inch, and yet the pains that
have been expended upon the cabbage and the fish are not for a moment
disproportionate: the cabbage and the fish, for all their finish,
remain subordinate and appropriate details. The picture is the picture
of the mother and the children. "The Night School"--No. 795 in the
Ryks Museum at Amsterdam--is, I believe, more generally admired, but
"The Young Housekeeper" is the better. "The Night School" might be
described as the work of a pocket Rembrandt; "The Young Housekeeper"
is the work of an artist of rare individuality and sympathy. At the
Wallace Collection may be seen a hermit by Dou quite in his best
nocturnal manner.