A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer
1663
Artist, Dutch, 1634 - 1682

A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer, signed and dated 1663, represents Jacob Ochtervelt at his artistic height. It depicts a young boy about three years old offering alms to a family of beggars. The household’s maid tenderly holds his hand while his parents, visible through the open doorway, proudly observe their son’s charity—a virtue taught in the home and of great importance to the Dutch. The beggar boy sets his foot cautiously on the hall floor to receive a coin while his mother holds a nursing infant to her breast. Because the patrician boy is still so young he wears his hair in long curls and is outfitted in a freshly ironed white dress, as was common for boys until the age of around seven. Ochtervelt masterfully contrasts the privileged world of the aristocratic family with the uncertainties of the life of the poor by differentiating the dark, ragged clothing of the beggars with the splendid marble hallway and luminous attire of the house’s inhabitants.
Throughout his career, Ochtervelt focused on patrician life and leisure—men and women reading and writing letters, eating and drinking, and making music. However, his most innovative scenes were those depicting the interactions between the upper and lower classes at the threshold of an elegant townhouse. These are known as voorhuis (front hall) scenes. A Nurse and a Child in an Elegant Foyer is one of his finest voorhuis paintings, characterized by Ochtervelt’s clarity of light and color, and by his sympathetic rendering of people from all social classes. A native of Rotterdam, Ochtervelt spent the majority of his successful career in that great port city before moving to Amsterdam in 1674, where he lived until his death.

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 50
Artwork overview
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Medium
oil on canvas
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Credit Line
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Dimensions
overall: 81.5 × 66.8 cm (32 1/16 × 26 5/16 in.)
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Accession
2015.68.1
More About this Artwork
Artwork history & notes
Provenance
Thomas Theodore Cremer [1742-1815], Rotterdam; (his estate sale, at his residence by Nozeman, Van der Looy, W. van Leen, and W.A. Netscher, Rotterdam, 16-17 April 1816, 1st day, no. 84); Sérafin Lambert Louis Malfait [1775-1827], Lille. Charles Piérard, Valenciennes; (his estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 20-21 March 1860, no. 53). Comte de M*****; (his estate sale, Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 29 December 1860, no. 23). acquired c. 1982 by private collection, Europe; (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 20 January 2014, no. 38); (Johnny Van Haeften, London); sold 10 September 2015 to NGA.
Associated Names
Exhibition History
2021
Clouds, Ice, and Bounty: The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund Collection of Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Paintings, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 2021, no. 16, repro.
Bibliography
2016
Libby, Alexandra. "Jacob Ochtervelt, A Nurse and a Child in the Foyer of an Elegant Townhouse." National Gallery of Art Bulletin no. 54 (Spring 2016): 20, repro.
Inscriptions
lower right on the floor: J. Ochtervelt f. / 1663
Wikidata ID
Q46625025