A Poulterer's Shop

In the 18th century this small panel passed through some of the grandest collections in France. The Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV's chief minister, owned it, and at his sale in 1772 it fetched 17,300 francs. Five years later it made 20,000 at the Prince de Conti's sale, and in 1811 its owner bought it back at auction for 26,000. William Beckford, the English collector, bought it in Paris in 1814, and it came to the National Gallery in 1871 with the collection of the prime minister Sir Robert Peel. Every one of those owners was paying for the finish. Dou painted the frayed cloth under the bucket, the smooth stone sill and the pocked skin of the plucked duck, and he mirrored the birds in the curve of the pail. The relief of children playing with a goat below the sill, based on a 17th-century marble, turns up in his work from 1651 on.