Attributed to Gerrit Dou
The story
Attributed to Gerrit Dou means the museum believes a picture is his and cannot prove it. In Dou's case the doubt grows out of his success. His small, minutely finished panels sold for prices few painters in the Dutch Republic could ask, and in Leiden a whole circle learned his manner from close up. Frans van Mieris, the most gifted of his pupils, Godfried Schalcken, and Dou's own nephew Dominicus van Tol all worked in it, at the same tiny scale and with the same polished surface, and so did followers who never set foot in his studio.
Over the centuries pictures have moved back and forth between his name and theirs, and in old collections a good many small panels once listed as Dou now carry other names.
