Dog at Rest

A small white dog has curled up for a nap on a shelf, its nose tucked in and its eyes not quite shut. It lies against a plain earthenware jug with a chipped lid, a bundle of mossy sticks, a wicker basket and a single slipper. Gerrit Dou painted it in Leiden in 1650 on a panel about 16 by 22 centimetres, smaller than a sheet of writing paper, and worked the fur, the wet nose and the leathery pads as closely as the shine on the jug. When the collection of Johan Pompe van Meerdervoort was sold in Leiden in 1780, the panel made 800 guilders. It changed hands again in Rotterdam in 1816 and in Amsterdam in 1817, each time for a little more, and in 1865, when it was auctioned in Paris from the family of the Dutch barons van Brienen, it fetched 22,000 francs. The van Brienen wax seal is still on the back. Eijk and Rose-Marie van Otterloo, collectors in Marblehead, Massachusetts, bought the panel in 2005 and have promised it to the Museum of Fine Arts.