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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

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 86.2 × 70.33 cm (33 15/16 × 27 11/16 in.)

framed: 111.13 × 95.57 × 9.53 cm (43 3/4 × 37 5/8 × 3 3/4 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection)

Accession Number

2016.22.6

Artists / Makers

Pieter de Hooch (painter) Dutch, 1629 - 1684

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
Read our full Open Access policy for images .

Inscription

in the architectural detail over doorway: P [D?] Hoo

Provenance

Richard von Kaufmann, Berlin, at least by 1890.[1] Berthold Richter, Berlin, in 1892. Gottfried von Preyer [1807-1901], Vienna; purchased 1902 by William A. Clark [1839-1925], New York; bequest April 1926 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2016 by the National Gallery of Art.

[1] Von Kaufmann lent the work to the exhibition Austellung von Werken der Niederländischen Kunst des Siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, in Berlin, in 1890.

Associated Names

Clark, William Andrews
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Preyer, Gottfried von

Exhibition History

1890: Austellung von Werken der Niederländischen Kunst des Siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, Königlichen Akademie, Berlin, 1 April - 15 May 1890, no. 137.

1906: Loan to display with the permanent collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1906-1910 (or possibly 1908-1909).

1989: The William A. Clark Collection: Treasures of a Copper King, Yellowstone Art Center, Billings; Montana Historical Society, Helena, 1989, unnumbered catalogue.

2017: Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, Musée du Louvre, Paris; National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin; National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2017-2018, not in catalogue (shown only in Washington).

Bibliography

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):possibly 223, no. 13, as A Music Party.

1892: Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. "Proeve eener Kritische Beschrijving van het Werk van Pieter de Hooch." Oud Holland 10 (1892): 181, no. 17.

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): 529, no. 191.

1907: Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907-1928: 1(1907):528, no. 191.

1914: de Rudder, Arthur. Pieter de Hooch et son oeuvre. Brussels and Paris, 1914; 105.

1925: Carroll, Dana H. Catalogue of Objects of Fine Art and Other Properties at the Home of William Andrews Clark, 962 Fifth Avenue. Part II. Unpublished manuscript, n.d. (1925): 208.

1928: Corcoran Gallery of Art. Illustrated Handbook of the W.A. Clark Collection. Washington, 1928: 45.

1955: Breckenridge, James A. A Handbook of Dutch and Flemish Paintings in the Williams Andrews Clark Collection. Washington, 1955; 28-29.

1980: Sutton, Peter C. Pieter de Hooch: Complete Edition with a Catalogue Raisonne. Oxford, 1980; 110.

1986: Sutton, Peter C. A Guide to Dutch Art in America. Washington and Grand Rapids, 1986; 300.

1991: Ydema, Onno. Carpets and Their Datings in Netherlandish Paintings, 1540-1700. Zutpen, 1991; 160.