ich they rendered the smallest detail with
meticulous exactitude.

GERARD DOU was born at Leyden on the 7th April 1613, died there 1680. He
entered Rembrandt's school at fifteen years of age, and in three years
had attained the position of an independent artist. He devoted himself
at first to portraiture, and, like his master, made his own face
frequently his subject. Afterwards he treated scenes from the life
chiefly of the middle classes. He took particular pleasure in the
representation of hermits; he also painted scriptural events and
occasionally still life. His lighting is frequently that of lanterns and
candles. Most of his pictures contain only from one to three figures,
and do not exceed about 2 ft. high and 1 ft. 3 in. wide, being often
smaller. His pictures seldom attain even an animated moral import, and
may be said to be limited usually to a certain kindliness of sentiment.
On the other hand, he possessed a trace of his master's feeling for the
picturesque, and for chiaroscuro. Notwithstanding the incalculable
minuteness of his execution, the touch of his brush is free and soft,
and his best pictures look like Nature seen through the camera-obscura.
His works were so highly estimated in his own time, that the President
van Spiring, at the Hague, offered him 1000 florins a year for the right
of pre-emption of his pictures. Considering the time which such finish
required, and the early age at which he died, the number of his
pictures--Smith enumerates about 200--is remarkable. In the Louvre are
the following:--An old woman seated at a window, reading the Bible to
her husband; this is one of the best among the many representations by
Dou of a similar kind, being of warm sunny effect, and marvellous
finish. Also the _Woman with the Dropsy_, which is accounted his
_chef-d'oeuvre_.

Among the scholars of Gerard Dou, FRANS VAN MIERIS, born at Leyden 1635,
died 1681, takes the first place. In chiaroscuro, and in delicacy of
execution he is not inferior to his master. Although his pictures are
generally very small, yet with their extraordinary minuteness of
execution it is surprising that, in a life extended only to forty-six
years, he should have produced so many. The Munich Gallery has most,
then Dresden, Vienna, Florence, and St. Petersburg. The date, 1656, on a
picture in the Vienna Gallery, _The Doctor_, shows the painter to have
attained the summit of his art at twenty-one years of age. Another dated
1660, i