Messrs. Lawrie & Co.

Scottish, est. c. 1850

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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

Shown from the chest up, a pale-skinned man holds one hand to his chest as he looks at us in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our left almost in profile, and he turns his head to gaze out from the corners of his dark brown eyes. He has thick, dark brows, fleshy cheeks, and his pink lips are parted. He has a moustache and small patch of hair on under his lower lip. He has chin-length, straight brown hair and wears a high-crowned, brimmed black hat pushed slightly back on his forehead. A flat white collar lies across his shoulders over a voluminous black coat. His right palm, farther from us, rests against his chest, and the other hand is tucked below, mostly hidden by the coat. The wrist we see has a wide white cuff. The portrait is loosely painted, especially in the black-on-black pattern of the man’s clothing and the earth-brown background. The artist signed the painting with his initials in a conjoined monogram near the man’s far elbow, along the left edge of the canvas: “FH.”
Frans Hals, Portrait of a Man, 1648/1650, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.28

Portrait of a Man

Frans Hals · 1648/1650 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.28

We look across an expanse of a flat, grassy lawn at the towering spire of a stone church outlined against billowing clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. The lawn is dappled with light filtering through a line of trees with thick, green canopies to our left. The trees take up almost the left half of the composition, and they line a dirt path where three people walk. Tiny in scale, the people are painted with strokes of slate blue, red, white, and black. A few animals, perhaps cows, graze on the lawn near more trees on the far side of the green. Beyond the trees, the church sits on the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. Minuscule touches of yellow, black, and red may suggest more people in the deep distance. The pale blue sky is nearly filled with puffy parchment-white and mauve-tinged clouds.
John Constable, Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close, 1820, oil on canvas, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.108

Salisbury Cathedral from Lower Marsh Close

John Constable · 1820 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1937.1.108