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Pieter de Hooch
Dutch, 1629 - 1683
Dutch painter. He was one of the most accomplished 17th-century Dutch genre painters, excelling in the depiction of highly ordered interiors with domestic themes and merry companies and pioneering the depiction of genre scenes set in a sunlit courtyard. The hallmarks of his art are an unequalled responsiveness to subtle effects of daylight, and views to adjoining spaces, either through a doorway or a window, offering spatial as well as psychological release.
1. Life and work.
(i) Early life and early work in Delft, 1629–c. 1661.
De Hooch was the son of a bricklayer and a midwife. According to Houbraken, he was a pupil of the Haarlem landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem at the same time as Jacob Ochtervelt, a fellow Rotterdamer. Little or nothing of Berchem’s style is detectable in de Hooch’s early works, which mostly depict guardroom scenes. However, Ochtervelt went on to paint genre scenes with perspectival effects similar to those created by de Hooch. In 1652 de Hooch signed a document in Delft with the painter Hendrick van der Burgh, who subsequently became his follower and was probably his brother-in-law. De Hooch’s early career as an artist seems to have required, as was commonly the case, a second career, and in 1652 he was described as both a painter and servant to a linen merchant, Justus de La Grange. An inventory of the latter’s collection completed in 1655 lists 11 paintings by the artist. In the same year de Hooch joined the Delft Guild of St Luke and he made additional payments to the Guild in 1656 and 1657. De Hooch’s paintings of guardrooms have plausibly been dated to the artist’s early career; they follow the tradition initiated by such artists as Pieter Codde, Willem Duyster and Anthonie Palamedesz., and they seem to reflect recent developments in the subject introduced by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout and Ludolf de Jongh. The latter’s style is more fluid than de Hooch’s but could have inspired not only his subjects but also aspects of his increasingly colourful palette.
De Hooch’s paintings of guardrooms and peasant interiors are not as accomplished in terms of design and technique nor so sophisticated in their exploration of the expressive effects of light and space, although they often include a nascent interest in views to adjacent spaces, as in the artist’s earliest dated paintings: six works from 1658, all depicting rectilinear interior genre scenes or sunny courtyard views with Delft motifs (see [not available online]). These are the works of a mature master; indeed they include some of the greatest and best-known works by de Hooch, for example the Card-players in a Sunlit Room (London, Buckingham Pal., Royal Col.) and the Courtyard in Delft with a Woman and Child (London, N.G.). By 1658 de Hooch was a leading practitioner of the so-called Delft school style (see Delft school (i)), the sources of which are still open to discussion; the style is characterized by a light tonality, dramatic perspectival effects and an exceptional responsiveness to natural light. Delft’s greatest painter, Johannes Vermeer, who is also associated with this school, began painting carefully composed, light-filled interior genre scenes with couples and single figures at almost the same time as de Hooch. The two artists undoubtedly knew one another, but in the early years de Hooch (who was three years older) was probably the first to master the illusion of space and subtle lighting effects; Vermeer’s only dated painting from the 1650s is The Procuress (1656; Dresden, Gemäldegal. Alte Meister)—a life-sized genre scene in the tradition of the earlier Utrecht Caravaggisti. However, Vermeer went on to refine de Hooch’s ideas, reducing the elements of his art to a single, still, three-quarter-length figure in the corner of a light-filled room. By the time that de Hooch painted his Woman Weighing Coins in the mid-1660s (Berlin, Gemäldegal.), it was in deliberate emulation of, possibly even in competition with, Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance of several years earlier (Washington, DC, N.G.A.).
The subjects of de Hooch’s mature Delft period were more conventional than their treatment. Merry companies with elegantly dressed young men and women gaming or sharing a drink (e.g. Woman Drinking with Soldiers, 1658; Paris, Louvre) were by this time standard themes in Dutch genre. More innovative was his contribution to the tradition of domestic subjects—images of women performing household chores, ministering to children or supervising maidservants, as in, for example, Woman Nursing an Infant (San Francisco, CA, Pal. Legion of Honor). De Hooch’s celebration of domesticity is no doubt related to the sanctity and centrality of the home in Dutch society. In the Protestant Republic of the United Netherlands, the home rather than the church became the primary forum for moral instruction and pedagogy. By the mid-17th century the social history of the family had also changed, as the old medieval extended family was increasingly replaced by a smaller, more intimate nuclear family group. De Hooch’s orderly spaces perfectly complemented this new celebration of domesticity, the walls and their light-filled windows and doorways creating a comforting framework for chores and nurturance. By the same token, his small courtyards are an extension of the home and are constructed with virtually the same spatial formulae as his interiors. Some of these scenes include identifiable buildings, for example the Oude Kerk and Nieuwe Kerk in Delft, but are in fact imaginary compositions. Although independent inventions, de Hooch’s courtyards, too, are related to the rise (especially in Delft) of the Townscape as an independent sub-genre of landscape painting.
Iconographic studies of Dutch genre paintings have often revealed ‘hidden meanings’, or what Erwin Panofsky called ‘disguised symbolism’, in outwardly naturalistic scenes. De Hooch did not share the metaphorical and highly moralizing approach of some of his contemporaries, notably Jan Steen and, closer at hand, Vermeer, but he would occasionally employ time-honoured symbolic devices, such as the painting-within-the-painting, to comment on his scenes. The meanings of his art usually arise from the associations of the subjects depicted, such as his images of domestic virtue, rather than through covertly encoded ideas. When he introduced symbols, they usually functioned as supplementary footnotes rather than the central theme of his works of art.
(ii) Amsterdam, c. 1661 and after.
De Hooch had settled in Amsterdam by April 1661, or perhaps as much as 11 months earlier. There he apparently remained for the rest of his life except for a visit to Delft in 1663. Although he never abandoned his favourite domestic themes (e.g. Interior with Women beside a Linen Chest, 1663; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.), de Hooch painted increasingly elegant subjects and wealthier households after his move. After c. 1663 his interior spaces, following the earlier examples of Gabriel Metsu and Jan Steen, became richer; his figures, in the manner of Gerard ter Borch, more refined; and his touch, like that of the Leiden ‘Fine’ painters, more minute. His simple Delft courtyards were replaced by the gardens of country villas, and his earlier cottage interiors by palatial halls, some of which are partly based on the galleries of the new Town Hall (now Royal Palace) in Amsterdam (e.g. the Musical Company, c. 1664–6; Leipzig, Mus. Bild. Kst.). In the late 1660s and 1670s de Hooch’s palette became darker and his technique broader, and he often executed larger canvases. His address in these years suggests that he lived in a poor quarter of the town, although he continued occasionally to receive important portrait commissions (e.g. the portrait of the Jacott–Hoppesack Family, c. 1670; untraced, see Sutton, no. 92). The quality of his execution wavered increasingly in the late 1670s and after c. 1680 deteriorated alarmingly. It is unknown whether these developments were related to the painter’s final illness: de Hooch died in the Dolhuis (Dut.: ‘Bedlam’). However, the splendid twilit Musical Party in a Courtyard (1677; London, N.G.) proves that the artist was capable of outstanding work even late in his career.
2. Influence.
Since de Hooch had no known pupils, the ‘de Hooch School’ is a misnomer. However, several artists worked in his style; the closest of these followers was Hendrick van den Burgh; Pieter Janssens Elinga (1623–before 1682) painted highly ordered interiors, but more rigidly than de Hooch, and he seems to have relied heavily on perspective recipes. The interest in interior perspectives exhibited by Cornelis de Man (1621–1706) probably acknowledges a debt to his younger Delft colleagues de Hooch and Vermeer. The work of Esaias Boursse and Jacobus Vrel also resembles aspects of de Hooch’s paintings (and many of Vrel’s paintings bear signatures altered to de Hooch’s), but these two painters were essentially independent artists with no known contacts with the master. Jacob Ochtervelt was a highly accomplished painter in his own right who perhaps borrowed from de Hooch in conceiving his foyer scenes, but he ultimately created his own style, one that owes as much to Leiden and Frans van Mieris as to Delft. In the 20th century Han van Meegeren painted two ‘de Hooch’s’, one of which was acquired in 1941 by Daniel van Beuningen, who always refused to accept that it was a forgery.
Peter C. Sutton. "Hooch, Pieter de." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T038835 (accessed May 8, 2012).
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