LONDON.- Gerrit Dou's first depiction of a musician, The Flute Player, will lead Christie's Old Masters Evening Sale on 2 December during Classic Week in London (estimate: £2,000,000-3,000,000). Dou, like his teacher Rembrandt, was among the most successful Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, attracting patrons such as Cosimo III de' Medici, and with his works presented to Charles II of England. An early masterpiece from his relatively small and highly sought-after oeuvre, this vanitas – a still-life charged with symbolic meaning – alludes to music, learning and the brevity of life. Painted with microscopic detail and an enamel-like finish that conceals all trace of the brush, it exemplifies the extraordinary technical precision that made Dou one of the most acclaimed painters of his age. The picture has been in a celebrated English collection for 125 years, having belonged to William Proby, 5th Earl of Carysfort (1836–1909) at Elton Hall by 1900, and has since passed by descent.

Maja Markovic, Head of Old Masters Evening Sale, Christie's London: “The unwavering interest in Dou's paintings across the centuries is confirmed by this work. Its appearance on the market for the first time in well over a century offers a new generation of collectors the opportunity to acquire an early masterpiece by an artist whose extraordinary command of the brush continues to mesmerise viewers today just as it did connoisseurs four centuries ago.”

SUBJECT

Although musical instruments appear as still-life elements in a number of Gerrit Dou's early works, The Flute Player is his earliest known representation of a musician. Conceived as a vanitas, the painting moves between intellect and sensuality: music is evoked as both a liberal art and a fleeting pleasure, while the hourglass, violin, globes and books allude to human ambition measured against the passage of time. These themes resonated strongly in seventeenth-century Leiden, where Dou's refined pictorial language found a scholarly audience attuned to such symbolism. Characteristically, the sitter returns the viewer's gaze, establishing an intimate, almost conversational exchange. This quiet act of acknowledgement — understated yet intentional — is one of the hallmarks of Dou's art and sets him apart from many of his contemporaries.

PATRONAGE

Gerrit Dou's extraordinary technique, refined pictorial language and comparatively small output ensured that his paintings commanded princely sums in his own lifetime. His patrons included Cosimo III de' Medici, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria and the Dutch States General, who acquired three of his works as diplomatic gifts for Charles II upon his accession in 1660. Pieter Spiering, envoy of the Swedish crown in The Hague, even paid Dou five hundred guilders a year simply for the right of first refusal on his paintings. The sustained admiration for his art in the centuries that followed is demonstrated by this picture, which passed through the hands of some of the foremost British collectors of the nineteenth century, including William Proby, 5th Earl of Carysfort, in whose family it has remained.

CHRISTIE'S AND GERRIT DOU

Christie's achieved the world auction record for Gerrit Dou in 2023 with A young woman holding a hare with a boy at a window, which achieved $7 million in the Rothschild Masterpieces sale.