The artist's devices: illusionism and imagination in Gerrit Dou's Painter with a pipe and book
Date
2005
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Gerrit Dou's Painter with a Pipe and Book (circa 1645) is both a painting of a painting and a painting about painting. It visually represents artistic concepts important to Dou: his manual skill is represented by the illusionistic style of the painting and his learning and imagination are represented by his clever composition, which incorporates devices from portraiture and popular prints, still-life and genre painting. Dou transforms the traditional portrait convention of showing an artist or scholar resting an arm on a ledge by portraying the artist in the Painter with a Pipe and Book smoking a pipe. The act of smoking recalls genre scenes, where the lower classes are shown squandering time. However, tobacco was also thought to inspire artists and appears in many self-portraits. The arched window that frames the Painter is based on both the seeming naturalistic shop windows Dou would have known from life and from Jost Amman's prints illustrating the popular Book of Trades, Das Ständebuch, originally printed in 1568. This framing device also commonly framed allegorical still-lifes. Dou's manual skill is evident in his meticulous illusionistic style. Dou presents this work as a painting of a painting: the area within the space of the niche is to be understood as a painting while the black frame, curtain and rod are presented as 'real.' However, Dou deliberately confuses the 'reality' of what he projects by incorporating unexpected consistencies between supposedly distinct areas of the painting.