A Young Woman (1640): Art, History and Details

A Young Woman (1640) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613–1675).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This painting may depict a specific person as in a traditional portrait. The less formal costume and the tight focus on the head, however, may mean that it is a tronie, a popular category of painting among Dutch painters in the 1600s. While painted from living models, tronies represent more general types of people, designed as beautiful images rather than accurate likenesses of people known to their patrons.

Object facts

• Title: A Young Woman
• Date: 1640
• Creator attribution: Gerrit Dou (Dutch, 1613–1675)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on wood
• Dimensions: Framed: 35 x 31 x 5 cm (13 3/4 x 12 3/16 x 1 15/16 in.); Unframed: 16.3 x 12.1 cm (6 7/16 x 4 3/4 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1951.325

Collection credit

Bequest of William G. Mather

Further reading listed by the museum

• Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. Pt. 9. Supplement. London: Smith and Son, 1829.
• Martin, Wilhelm. Het Leven en de Werken van Gerrit Dou. Leiden, 1901.
• Martin, W., and Clara Bell. Gerard Dou. London, UK: G. Bell and Sons, 1902.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.