Pieter de Hooch

Hoogh, Pieter de
Hooghe, Pieter de

Dutch, 1629 - 1684

Pieter Hendricksz de Hooch (occasionally spelled de Hoogh) was baptized in the Reformed Church in Rotterdam on December 20, 1629. His father was a master bricklayer and his mother a midwife. His only recorded teacher was the land­scape painter Berchem, Nicolaes Pietersz, with whom he studied in Haarlem along with fellow pupil Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682). The exact dates of this apprenticeship are not known. Berchem’s interest in landscape apparently had little effect on De Hooch, whose earliest paintings are almost all bar­rack-room scenes.

De Hooch is first recorded in Delft on August 5, 1652, when he and another painter, Hendrick van der Burch (1627–after 1666), witnessed the signing of a will. The following year he is documented as a painter and dienaar (servant or assistant) to a wealthy merchant named Justus de la Grange, a resident of both Delft and Leiden whose collection contained eleven of the artist’s paintings when it was inventoried in 1655. De Hooch witnessed a baptism in Leiden in 1653, but in 1654, when he married Jannetje van der Burch of Delft, he was living in Rotterdam. He and his wife, who was probably the sister of the painter Hendrick van der Burch, had seven children.

De Hooch entered the Delft guild in 1655 and is recorded as having paid dues in 1656 and 1657. He remained in that city until the end of the decade, but sometime between mid-1660 and April 1661 he set­tled in Amsterdam. Apart from a visit to Delft in 1663, he apparently remained in Amsterdam for the rest of his life. It was long believed that De Hooch died at the age of fifty-four while an inmate at the Amsterdam dolhuis (lunatic asylum).[1] However, that institution's records shows that the Pieter de Hooch who died in the asylum was the artist's son, also named Pieter.[2]

Between about 1655 and 1662, De Hooch’s work rose to the very highest level of achievement. Almost all of his paintings from these years depict interiors or courtyards containing just a few people, engaged either in domestic activities or in some restrained form of entertainment or merrymaking. The atmosphere in these works is characteristically calm, spacious, and airy, effects created through De Hooch’s masterly control of light, color, and com­plex perspectival construction. These are also all essential elements of the style of Vermeer, Johannes, with whom he must have had contact.

By the end of the 1660s De Hooch’s work had lost much of its delicacy and finesse. His later compositions be­came grander and more contrived, and his color harmonies and light effects harsher. His last dated painting is from 1684. Although De Hooch had no known pupils, artists whose works have been confused with his include Hendrick van der Burch, Ludolf de Jongh (1616–1679), Pieter Janssens Elinga (1623–before 1682), and Esaias Boursse (1631–1672).

 

[1] Amsterdam, Stadsarchief, Doop-, Trouw- en Begraafregisters 1195/117, 24th March 1684: "Pieter de Hoogh int Dolhuijs." Christopher Brown was the first to publish this archival information in Art in seventeenth century Holland (London, 1976), 54.

[2] Frans Grijzenhout, "New Information on Pieter de Hooch and the Amsterdam lunatic asylum," The Burlington Magazine (September 2008): 612-613.

 

Explore Selected Works

Four elegantly dressed men and women, plus a brown and white dog, gather around a rug-covered table in a shadowy room in this vertical painting. The people all have pale skin and are lit from our left. The women have blond hair and wear long silk dresses, and the men have shoulder-length wavy hair. At the center of the painting and closest to us, a woman stands with her back mostly to us, her body angled away to our right. Her face is in shadow, but we see the tip of a delicate nose. Her hair is pulled to the back of her head, and a few touches of white paint suggest a ribbon or ornament there. She wears pearl earrings, a pearl necklace, and a four-stranded pearl bracelet on the hand we can see. Her pale, mint-green dress drops off her shoulders and has a tight bodice. Puffy white sleeves of her undershirt are gathered at her elbows under the short, bell-shaped sleeves of the bodice. Her skirt falls in shiny folds and pools on the floor. The fabric reflects cream white where the light strikes the satin, and the shadows are cool, faint green. The woman holds her right hand out and clasps the hand of a cleanshaven man on the right side of the table. He smiles as he looks at her with wide-set eyes in a round face. He wears a broad-brimmed hat. His brown jacket is tied with a red bow at his throat and is red where the cuffs are rolled back. The white shirt he wears beneath is visible at his neck and in voluminous sleeves at his wrists. The jacket is lined with shiny buttons down the front, and it opens across his hips over red pants. He holds a glass with amber-colored liquid up in front of his chest with his other hand. A man between the pair is deep in shadow in the background. He holds up one hand as he looks down and to our left, a faint smile on his lips. The fourth person, another woman, sits to our left on our side of the table. Her hair is gathered in bunches over each ear. She also wears pearl earrings and a necklace. Her dress is red over an ice-blue skirt, which has bands of gold down the front and around the bottom hem. She holds both hands up near the table, to our right, as she looks down at the dog in the lower left corner of the composition. The dog has brown and white spots, a feathery tail, long brown ears, a white muzzle, and it stands tensed, its head lowered a little as it looks up toward the table. The rug covering the table is patterned with crimson red, black, and tan. A silver dish holds an orange-colored piece of fruit at the front right corner of the table. A landscape painting hanging on the back wall behind the group is framed in architectural molding. Details are difficult to make out in the shadowy background but there seems to be an olive-green screen behind the seated woman, with a piece of cloth, perhaps a coat, flung over the top. The floor is tiled with brown and white squares. The artist signed the work as if a coat-of-arms over the landscape painting is painted partially with his name: “P HOO.”
Pieter de Hooch, The Greeting, c. 1675, oil on canvas, Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection), 2016.22.6

The Greeting

Pieter de Hooch · c. 1675 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  2016.22.6

A woman stands drinking from a tall glass as two men sit at a table in a courtyard enclosed by wood paneling and brick buildings in this vertical painting. The people all have pale, peachy skin. The men, table, and woman take up the lower left quadrant of the composition. Both men wear broad-brimmed, black hats. The man closer to us, on our side of the table, faces our right in profile and holds a long white, clay pipe to his lips. He wears an ink-black jacket and tan leggings. A white stocking hangs down in a wide cuff from his knee on the leg we can see. A dove-gray cape is draped across his lap and a brown coat with gold-colored buttons is slung over a railing behind his back. Across the table, a bearded man wears a shining armor breastplate over a brown shirt. He looks up at the woman and smiles, holding a blue and white tankard with the lid flipped open in one hand. Another pipe and piece of paper sit on the narrow table between the men. The woman stands to one side of the table, facing our left in profile and the toe of her shoe touching or nearly brushing the black shoe of the man closer to us. Her brown hair is covered by a white cap, and she wears a tan-colored jacket, a long, crimson-red skirt, and an ultramarine-blue apron. Across the courtyard, in the lower right corner of the painting, a young girl also wears a white cap and blue apron but with a slate-gray shirt and laurel-green skirt. She approaches the table. A glowing ember is visible inside the ceramic brown dish she holds in both hands. The slightly uneven floor is paved with long, pale yellow bricks. A building rises to our right, a red shutter opening out from a window on the ground level. The other, closed shutter is painted with triangles of black, white, and gray. A half-wall of red brick across from us surrounds an open door, through which are stairs and a tree trunk. More trees rise above the top of that wall. Horizontal paneling encloses the courtyard to our left, behind the men. A church steeple in the distance is silhouetted against the sky over the paneling. A few wispy white clouds float across the vivid blue sky above.
Pieter de Hooch, A Dutch Courtyard, 1658/1660, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.56

A Dutch Courtyard

Pieter de Hooch · 1658/1660 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.56

A smiling young child holds the latch of an open wooden door as she looks toward a woman to our right in this almost square painting. The woman and child both have pale skin and stand in a bedroom. To our left, the child is the same height as the door handle, and she faces us. Her blond, upswept hair is backlit, and light falls on her from windows to our left. She turns to look at the woman with dark eyes, a slight smile on her pink lips. She wears a garment with a mauve-gray bodice and sleeves, a sage-green apron over a honey-yellow, ankle-length skirt, and dark shoes. She holds the ring of the door latch with her right hand, to our left, and holds a ball by her side in her other hand. The room has white walls with thick wood beams above, wood molding around the door and window, and a clay-red tiled floor. On the wall to either side of the girl and about the same height as she is, white tiles painted with scenes in azure blue line the walls. Wooden chairs to either side of the door have lion-shaped finials and a diamond pattern on the cloth-covered backs. A landscape painting in a black frame hangs over the door, and a wood table covered with a red cloth, holding a ceramic jug, sits to our left, along the wall coming toward us. The rightmost third of the composition is spanned by a bed set within a ceiling-high, cabinet-like enclosure. The woman stands in front of the bed, her body facing our left in profile. A white kerchief covers her hair and is tied under her chin. She wears a red shirt with white at the chest and cuffs, which are rolled back. A marine-blue skirt falls to her ankles. She holds a brown cloth in front of her, and another cloth is draped over a chair. A gleaming, squat, brown jug sits on floor nearby. A forest-green curtain lines the squared opening to the bed, and another green curtain is pulled to one side of a window next to the open door. Through the door and window, we see a second door across a shallow entryway, which leads outside. Both halves of the outer, Dutch door are open, though the top half swings in a little more than the bottom half. The space beyond has a fence or trellis, green plants, and the edge of a red roof.
Pieter de Hooch, The Bedroom, 1658/1660, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.33

The Bedroom

Pieter de Hooch · 1658/1660 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.33

A woman and child stand in an enclosed courtyard in this vertical painting. A two-story house rises along the left edge of the painting, and three more people gather at a table set within an enclosure at the far side of the courtyard to our right. All the people have pale skin. At the center of the composition, the woman holds a wide basket propped against a hip with one hand and a white pitcher down by her side with the other. Her hair is covered by a flat black cap that comes to a point high on the forehead. Her brown jacket is worn over a white shirt, which is visible at the neckline. A white apron is gathered and tied up over her long red skirt. She looks down, smiling, at the child at her side, to our right. The child wears a white cap over blond hair, a long brown garment with a wide, white collar, and a white apron. Holding a bird cage with both hands, the child looks off to our left. The courtyard is paved with tan bricks, but a slender tree, the same height as the woman, grows among the pavers in the bottom right of the composition. The corner of the house has a pink rose growing up a trellis, also the same height as the woman, on the side facing the pair. A wooden bucket and clay pot sit at the front corner of the house next to a wider basin on our side. A broom inside the basin leans against the brick wall below a black metal pump with a spout and long handle. Shadows cast by rooflines behind us fall on the second story of the house, which is clad in horizontal wood boards. A flight of stairs past the back corner of the house leads through an open door, which is set into a wall that encloses the far side of the courtyard. A structure with a narrow triangular pediment supported by pairs of pink columns covers a small dining area. Two men and a woman sit with a white pitcher and some food on the table, which is indistinct in the shadows. Across the table from us, the woman wears a black dress with a wide white collar, and she holds a flaring glass with red wine. The two men sitting with their backs angled to us wear tall, wide-brimmed black hats and black suits. The one closer to us holds a long-stemmed white clay pipe to his lips. Deep green canopies of trees peek over the far side of the wall, and the sky above has thin white clouds against a blue sky.
Pieter de Hooch, Woman and Child in a Courtyard, 1658/1660, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.34

Woman and Child in a Courtyard

Pieter de Hooch · 1658/1660 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.34

Bibliography

1753

  • Houbraken, Arnold. De Groote Schouburgh der Nederlantsche Konstschilders en Schilderessen. 3 vols. in 1. The Hague, 1753 (Reprint: Amsterdam, 1976): 2:34-35.

1829

  • Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 4(1833):217-242; 9(1842):563-574.

1907

  • Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols. Translated by Edward G. Hawke. London, 1907-1927: 1(1907):471-570.

1914

  • Rudder, Arthur de. Pieter de Hooch et son Oeuvre. Brussels and Paris, 1914.

1930

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Pieter de Hooch; The Master's Paintings. Translated by Alice M. Sharkey and E. Schwandt. London and New York, 1930.

1978

  • Fleischer, Roland E. "Ludolf de Johngh and the Early Work of Pieter de Hooch." Oud Holland 90 (1978): 49-67.

1980

  • Sutton, Peter C. Pieter de Hooch. Oxford, 1980.

1984

  • Sutton, Peter C. Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting. Edited by Jane Iandola Watkins. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin; Royal Academy of Arts, London. Philadelphia, 1984: 214-222.

1991

  • MacLaren, Neil. The Dutch School, 1600-1900. Revised and expanded by Christopher Brown. 2 vols. National Gallery Catalogues. London, 1991: 1:195-196.

1995

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 132-133.