Gerrit Dou (pronounced [ˈɣɛrɪt dʌu]; 7 April 1613 – 9 February 1675), also known as Gerard Douw or Dow, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders.

[1] From Rembrandt, with whom he remained for about three years, he acquired his skill in colouring and in the more subtle effects of chiaroscuro, and his master's style is reflected in several of his earlier pictures, notably a self-portrait at the age of 22, around 1635–1638, in the Bridgewater Collection, and in the Blind Tobit going to meet his Son, at Wardour Castle [locations may be outdated].

[2] At a comparatively early point in his career, however, he developed a distinctive manner of his own which diverged considerably from Rembrandt's, cultivating a minute and elaborate style of treatment.

[2] Dou's pictures brought high prices, and one patron, Pieter Spiering, who acted as Swedish Ambassador in The Hague from the mid-1630s, paid him 500 guilders annually simply for the right of first refusal of his latest works.

[3] Queen Christina of Sweden owned eleven paintings by Dou, and Cosimo III de' Medici visited his house, where he may have bought at least one of the works now in the Uffizi.

It was especially popular in Leiden where the painters were seeking to obtain the rights of a guild from the town council in order to have laws for their economic protection.

According to Sluijter, the "amazing true-to-life peacock and a beautiful Triton shell, next to a copper pot with the most refined reflections of light" show that art beats nature.

Sluijter argues that the peacock stands for the ability of painting to "preserve the transient works of nature thereby even surpassing it".

One of the most troublesome and thus one of the most instructive objects in Dou's oeuvre is a relief by François Duquesnoy called Putti Teasing a Goat.

A. Emmens, for example, states that in The Trumpeter the relief represents "the deceitfulness of human desires, because the goat, personifying lust, can time and again be deceived by appearance, by the deceptive imitation, which is the mask".

Sluijter acknowledges that a contemporary viewer would have certainly approved of this scene as representing an approximation of life since the rendering of all the material is very realistic.

Additionally, Baer suggests that the girl at the left is a representation of Cognitione because she strikes the same pose as in Cesare Ripa's Iconologia.

W. F. Harvey's short story "Old Masters" features a picture by Dou (as Gerhard Dow) as the subject of an ingenious scam.

A group of boys in Mary Mapes Dodge's Hans Brinker or the Silver Skates visit a museum in Amsterdam and see two paintings by "Gerard Douw", "The Hermit" and "Evening School."