Milkmaid after the painting of G.Dou in the Cabinet of Mr. Poullain

Milkmaid after the painting of G.Dou in the Cabinet of Mr. Poullain

Gerrit Dou

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This modest print records Dou's painting (Musée du Louvre, Paris) shortly after 1780, when it was sold from the Poulain collection in Paris. As in similar scenes invented by Dou during the 1640s and 1650s, the pretty kitchen maid is surrounded by motifs that had for decades stood for male and female private parts. Lost in the engraving, however, is the original play between two forms of seduction: that of the young woman and her friendly gaze, on the one hand, and that of illusionism (which seduces sight), on the other.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Milkmaid after the painting of G.Dou in the Cabinet of Mr. PoullainMilkmaid after the painting of G.Dou in the Cabinet of Mr. PoullainMilkmaid after the painting of G.Dou in the Cabinet of Mr. PoullainMilkmaid after the painting of G.Dou in the Cabinet of Mr. PoullainMilkmaid after the painting of G.Dou in the Cabinet of Mr. Poullain

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.