Gerard Dou (1613-1675) was in his day a highly popular and prosperous painter of petty tragedies. As a boy of fifteen he entered the studio of “the skilled and far-famed Mr. Rembrandt,” who was, however, his senior by only seven years. One is apt to tire of his irritating parade of cleverness in the manipulation of light and shade effects, and over-scrupulous and niggling treatment of detail. Yet it is these very qualities that brought him financial success when in later life Rembrandt was receiving scanty treatment at the hands of the art patrons of Holland. The _Dentist_ (No. 2355) is an early work. Dou’s _Portrait of an Old Lady_ (No. 2358) is now held to be a _Portrait of Rembrandt’s Mother_, and is regarded as the companion picture to the _Old Man Reading_ (No. 2567), by Dou’s pupil, Godfried Schalcken. The _Grocer’s Shop_ (No. 2350), which has been, with needless precision, “ranked about the seventh best of this master’s productions,” is signed in full on the slate, and dated 1647 on the mortar, while the _Cook with a Dead Cock_ (No. 2353) is signed on the window-sill, and dated 1650. [Illustration: PLATE XXXII.—GERARD DOU (1613-1675) DUTCH SCHOOL No. 2348.—THE DROPSICAL WOMAN (La Femme Hydropique) In a well-appointed room, lighted by an arched window on the left, an old woman is seated in an arm-chair. The sick woman, who raises her eyes to heaven and is taking a spoonful of medicine from a young woman, gives her right hand to a girl who kneels on the left by her side. Towards the right stands the doctor, who holds up to the light a glass full of liquid. A chandelier hangs in the centre, and on the right are a large tapestry curtain and a wine-cooler. Signed on the edge of the book placed on the reading-desk in the left foreground:— “1663. G. DOV. OVT. 65 JAER.” Painted in oil on panel. 2 ft. 8¾ in. × 2 ft. 2½ in. (0·83 × 0·67.)] The _Trumpeter_ (No. 2351) is perhaps the pendant to the _Girl at a Window_, of 1657, now in the Rothschild collection at Waddesdon Manor. On the window-ledge in the _Trumpeter_ we see the same silver flagon and a dish that also appear in the _Dropsical Woman_ (No. 2348, Plate XXXII.), a world-famous, but not on that account a great, picture. It bears a somewhat enigmatical inscription: “1663. G. DOV. OVT. 65 JAER”