Note 14 to Chapter 7 of the author's George Eliot and the Visual Arts, which Yale University Press published in 1979. It has been included in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
The correspondence is far less exact in the case of Nicolaes Maes's Grace before Meat in the Louvre, the painting which Mario Praz has nominated as the source of Eliot's description (The Hero in Eclipse, p. 3 8 5 and pl. 3 7). Dou's A Ite Frau am Fenster, Blumen begiessend in the Kunsthistorisches Museum at Vienna (Martin, Gerard Dou, p. 106) is probably the original of George Eliot's "old woman bending over her flowerpot" in chapter 17 of Adam Bede. The painting was acquired in 1811, and Eliot might have seen it in 1858; see Katalog der Gemdldegalerie: Holldndische Meister des IS., 16., und 17. Jahrhunderts (Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, 1972), p. 26. The other Dutch pictures evoked in chapter 17 are described too generically to be identifiable, but some of them have strong affinities with Adriaen van Ostade's work at Munich.
Last modified 20 September 2000