Gerrit Dou Enter a
feeling, not
a gallery.
Choose a mood and the room itself answers — the light cools or warms, the air changes pace, and only the works that carry that feeling step forward from the dark. Everything else recedes into shadow.
Gerrit Dou
Early Life, Family and Training Gerrit Dou was born on April 7, 1613, in Leiden, Netherlands. He grew up in a household where light and glass were central to daily life, as his father worked as a glazier and glass engraver. This early exposure to the delicate manipulation of light through glass likely shaped his developing eye. His father provided his first lessons, instilling a sense of precision that would define his later years. By 1
622, at the age of fourteen, he began an apprenticeship with the copper engraver Bartholomeus Dolendo. It was under Dolendo that he also studied the fundamentals of drawing, learning to translate form onto a surface with careful intent. His training continued through the specialized world of glasswork, spending two years in the stained-glass workshop of Pieter Couwenhorn. These formative years were spent mastering the technicalities o…