Pieter de Hooch is not as well-known these days as fellow Dutch masters Rembrandt or Vermeer (both of whom have appeared in these pages) but he was nonetheless a big hitter in the Dutch Golden Age and one of my favourite artists. The Dutch Golden Age, so called, was the period roughly spanning the 17th century in which the newly independent Dutch republic flourished to become Europe’s most prosperous nation and a leading light in European trade, science, and art.
The upheavals of the Eighty Years’ War (1568–1648), in which the Dutch secured their independence, entailed a break from the old Monarchist and Catholic traditions under the Habsburgs, and a shake-up in the arts as well as in other areas of life. Out went religious painting and in came a whole new variety of secular subjects from still lifes, landscapes and seascapes, to kamergezichten, or “room-views”, showing glimpses of everyday domestic life, the latter being specialities of Vermeer and this week’s subject, Pieter de Hooch.
Pieter de Hooch was born in Rotterdam to a bricklayer and a midwife, and was brought up in a modest working-class home. He went on to study art in Haarlem under the landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem and became known for his special affinity for figures in interiors. Beginning in 1650, he worked as a painter and servant for a linen-merchant and art collector in Rotterdam, and his work took him to The Hague, Leiden, and Delft, providing him with ample inspiration to pursue his speciality. His paintings capture delightful domestic scenes such as this one from 1658, The Courtyard of a House in Delft, which you can see in London’s National Gallery.
The painting depicts a quiet courtyard scene in which a young maid holds the hand of a small girl. An archway leads from the courtyard into a passageway and through to the other side of the house. Through the archway, a woman stands in the passageway, looking out to the street. The textures and details of the house, such as the tile pattern of the courtyard, the brickwork of the archway and the stone tablet above it, are rendered in detail. Simple but exquisite.
