Art Object Page

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Jan 01, 1995 Version

Overview

Pieter de Hooch worked in the small and relatively quiet city of Delft from 1652 to about 1660. Like other Delft artists, most notably Carel Fabritius and Johannes Vermeer, De Hooch painted everyday scenes that are remarkable for their clarity of perspective and harmony of light. He gave order to his compositions by emphasizing the geometry of architectural elements. The positioning of doors, windows and their shutters, floor tiles, and bricks was all carefully calculated and painted.

Women going about their daily chores or attending to visitors, such as the soldiers seen here sitting around a table smoking and drinking, are a frequent theme in De Hooch’s work. The man wearing a breastplate is setting down the pitcher he has used to refill the "pass-glass" held by the woman. The pass-glass was used in drinking games. Each participant had to drink down to a circular line on the glass; failing to reach the exact level, the reveler would be required to drink down to the next ring. Only when this was done successfully would the glass be passed on to the next participant. The little girl carries a brazier of hot coals so that the two soldiers can light their long-stemmed, white clay pipes. Despite its apparent realism, and the presence of the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk in the background, the scene probably does not depict a specific courtyard.

Entry

In a walled courtyard behind a brick house, two soldiers seated at a table enjoy a moment’s banter with a serving woman. While one of the soldiers puffs smoke from his clay pipe, the other, holding a Raeren earthenware jug, laughingly watches the woman drink beer from her pass-glass. The pass-glass was used in drinking games. Each participant had to drink down to a circular line on the glass; failing to reach the exact level, he or she would be required to drink to the next ring down. Only when this was done successfully would the glass be passed on to the next participant.[1] A young girl approaches on the right, bringing glowing embers for the men’s pipes. The open door in the brick wall reveals a stepped path that leads past a wooded yard to a distant house, which is also visible above the wall. The tower of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft rises over the wooden palisade on the far left.

The painting is one of the most accomplished of De Hooch’s “Delft Style” works from about 1660. The ordered, harmonious arrangement of architectural and figural elements creates a quiet and peaceful mood. The soft light that pervades the scene and the careful way in which De Hooch indicates the bricks and mortar of the buildings and courtyard enhance the painting’s naturalistic qualities. Its measured harmony also comes from the artist’s sensitivity to color and the way in which he intersperses accents of red, blue, and white throughout the scene. Particularly effective is the satiny sheen of the young girl’s blue dress, which he has suggested through the use of yellow highlights.

De Hooch achieved this sense of order by carefully manipulating the perspective and the placement of compositional elements. He strengthened the figural group by adjusting the woman’s position and bringing her closer to the table, which was revealed by Infrared Reflectography at 1.2 to 2.5 microns.[2] He also seems to have enlarged the little girl and moved her nearer to the house so that she became superimposed over the juncture of the house and the rear wall of the courtyard. Her placement and that of the bright orange-red window shutter directly above her serve to reduce the strong sense of recession created by the receding perspective of the building.

The brick wall behind the figures is presumably a section of the old city wall of Delft.[3] As in Woman and Child in a Courtyard, this courtyard was probably situated in the area of the city near the Binnenwatersloot. It is nevertheless unlikely that De Hooch represented an exact location. As can be demonstrated in his other paintings, including Woman and Child in a Courtyard, he frequently combined architectural motifs in an imaginary way for compositional reasons. In this instance, he has also taken liberties in his depiction of the peaked roof of the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk: it lacks the small spires that actually ring the top of the tower.[4]

De Hooch’s earliest genre scenes frequently depict soldiers sitting around a table smoking and drinking, attended to by a serving woman, a subject he has here moved outdoors into the courtyard of a middle-class home.[5] The men and women in these scenes are quite animated and playfully interact with one another, a pictorial approach also evident in the easy banter between the soldiers and the maidservant seen here.[6] The sun-filled setting with the distant church tower gives the scene an added sense of good will and optimism, one in which the threat of war that had so recently weighed heavily on the Dutch was no longer felt.

A replica of this painting is in the Mauritshuis, The Hague.[7] The major compositional difference between the two works is the absence of the seated soldier. This figure, however, does appear in X-radiographs [see X-radiography] of the painting and seems to have been painted out by a later hand. The breastplate worn by this soldier appears in other De Hooch paintings from this period, including A Soldier Paying a Hostess, which is dated 1658.[8] The Washington painting is shown hanging on the rear wall in a watercolor of a Dutch interior, dated 1783, by W. J. Laquy (1738–1798), a German artist then working in Amsterdam (see the 1995 archived version of this entry for the comparative image).[9] The drawing illustrates that the painting was then in a Dutch-style gold frame. The provenance of the painting before 1820 is unknown, thus we do not know in whose home Laquy saw it.

Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.

April 24, 2014

Provenance

Cornelis Sebille Roos [1754-1820], Amsterdam; (his sale, R.W.P. de Vries, Amsterdam, 28 August 1820, no. 51); Isaac van Eyck.[1] (sale, Paris); purchased by a Mr. Mason; purchased by Baron Lionel de Rothschild [1808-1879], Gunnersbury Park, Greater London, by 1842; by inheritance to his son, Nathan Mayer Rothschild, 1st baron Rothschild [1840-1915]; by exchange with or sale to his brother, Baron Alfred Charles de Rothschild [1842-1918], London and Halton House, near Wendover, Buckinghamshire;[2] bequeathed to his illegitimate daughter, Almina Victoria, Countess of Carnarvon [c. 1877-1969, later Mrs. Ian Onslow Dennistoun], London; sold 1924 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris);[3] sold November 1924 to Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 28 December 1934 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA.

[1] John Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 9(1842):573, no. 30.

[2] The Rothschild provenance information was kindly provided by Michael Hall, curator to Edmund de Rothschild; see his "Rothschild Picture Provenances" from 1999 and his letter of 27 February 2002, in NGA curatorial files, in which he cites documents in The Rothschild Archive, London.

[3] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Research Library, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles: reel 292, box 437, folders 4 and 5, and reel 293, box 438, folders 1 and 2; copies in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Carnarvon, Almina Victoria, Countess of
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Eyck, Isaac van
Mason Mr.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
Mellon, Andrew W.
Roos, Cornelis Sebille
Rothschild, Alfred Charles de
Rothschild, Lionel Nathan de, Baron
Rothschild, Nathaniel, 1st Lord
Sale, Amsterdam
Sale, Paris

Exhibition History

1939: Masterworks of Five Centuries, Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939, no. 81a, repro.

1998: Pieter de Hooch, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, 1998-1999, no. 19, repro., as Two Soldiers and a Woman Drinking in a Courtyard.

1999: Johannes Vermeer: The Art of Painting, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, not in brochure.

2001: Vermeer and the Delft School, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The National Gallery, London, 2001, no. 33, repro.

2007: Vermeer: La ragazza alla spinetta e i pittori di Delft, Foro Boario, Modena, 2007, no. 10, repro.

2015: The New American Garden: the Landscape Architecture of Oehme, Van Sweden & Associates, National Building Museum, Washington, 2015-2016, not in gallery guide (travelling exhibition of photographs; painting shown only in Washington).

2016: Building the Brafferton: The Founding, Funding and Legacy of America's Indian School, Muscarelle Museum of Art, Williamsburg, 2016-2017, no catalogue.

2019: Pieter de Hooch in Delft. From the Shadow of Vermeer, Museum Prinsenhof, Delft, 2019-2020.

Technical Summary

The medium-weight, plain-weave fabric support[1] has been lined with the tacking margins trimmed. A smooth off-white ground was applied somewhat thickly to the support. The ground is coated with a transparent brown wash that becomes thinner in the area corresponding to the sky. With the brown wash used as an undertone, De Hooch applied paint in thin, transparent layers. The impasted highlights are constructed of small dabs of color placed in close proximity, often overlapping. This technique produces a flickering effect, particularly in the flesh tones.

Careful visual examination and infrared reflectography at 1.2 to 2.5 microns[2] reveal a number of artist’s changes. The little girl appears to have been raised slightly and moved about one inch to the right of her original position. The head of the standing woman may have been more upright as she raised her glass somewhat higher. An earlier position of her foot was painted out. The fence originally extended between the two seated men. The positions of the arm and the beer stein of the central seated figure were changed. A pronounced pentimento of the stein at the elbow of this man suggests that his arm was originally positioned farther back in space so that the stein covered the view of the elbow. In the background, the courtyard visible through the open door originally contained a second somewhat thinner tree trunk. The arch in the doorway is painted over both tree trunks, so the arch probably came at a late stage in the creative process. Finally the top of the building on the right originally ended lower, so that it did not continue vertically to the top of the picture space.

The paint is in good condition with little loss and minor abrasion, except for the trees in the background and a one-inch band across the top of the sky, which are severely abraded. Other areas of abrasion include the little girl’s face, the woman’s blue apron, and the cloak of the man seated in the foreground. The painting was treated in 2002, at which time the abraded areas were inpainted to bring them into harmony with the rest of the composition.[3] Records indicated that prior to the most recent treatment, the painting was treated in Holland in the 1930s.[4]

[1] Average densities of 13.9 threads per centimeter horizontally and 14.0 threads per centimeter vertically were measured in the original support by the Thread Count Automation Project of Cornell University and Rice University (see report dated May 2010 in NGA Conservation department files).

[2] Infrared reflectography was performed using a Mitsubishi M600 PtSi Focal plane array camera.

[3] The NGA Scientific Research department analyzed the pigments using air-path X-ray Fluorescence spectroscopy (see report dated October 26, 1978, in NGA Conservation department files).

[4] See note in NGA Conservation department files.

Bibliography

1829: Smith, John. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters. 9 vols. London, 1829-1842: 9(1842):573, no. 30.

1854: Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of Art in Great Britain: Being an Account of the Chief Collections of Paintings, Drawings, Sculptures, Illuminated Mss.. 3 vols. Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake. London, 1854: 2:130.

1879: Havard, Henry. L'art et les artistes hollandais. 4 vols. Paris, 1879-1881: 3:128.

1884: Davis, Charles. A Description of the Works of Art Forming the Collection of Alfred de Rothschild. 2 vols. London, 1884: 1:no. 15, repro.

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):559, no. 295.

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):558, no. 295.

1914: Rudder, Arthur de. Pieter de Hooch et son oeuvre. Collection des grands artistes des Pays-Bas. Brussels and Paris, 1914: 61, 65.

1925: Collins Baker, Charles Henry. Pieter de Hooch. Masters of Painting. London, 1925: 6-7.

1926: Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Pieter de Hooch, Part I." Art in America 15, no. 1 (December 1926): 47, 53 fig. 4, 58, 61.

1927: Brière-Misme, Clotilde. "Tableaux inédits ou peu connus de Pieter de Hooch, Part II." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 69, no. 16 (July-August 1927): repro. 61, 63.

1927: Brière-Misme, Clotilde. "Tableaux inédits ou peu connus de Pieter de Hooch, Part III." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 69, no. 16 (November 1927): 286 errata (corrects reference to the Mellon painting in Part II, July-August 1927).

1927: Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Pieter de Hooch, Part II." Art in America 15, no. 2 (February 1927): 76, no. 10.

1929: Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "Pieter de Hooch: des meisters gemälde in 180 abbildungen mit einem anhang über di genremaler um Pieter de Hooch und die kunst Hendrik van der Burchs." Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben 35 (1929): xiv, xv, repro. 44 (also 1930 English ed., translated by Alice M. Sharkey and E. Schwandt, London and New York).

1930: Valentiner, Wilhelm R. Pieter de Hooch: The Master’s Paintings. Translated by Alice M. Sharkey and E. Schwandt. London and New York, 1930: xiv, xv, 44, repro.

1937: Jewell, Edward Alden. "Mellon's Gift." Magazine of Art 30, no. 2 (February 1937): 82.

1939: Golden Gate International Exposition. Masterworks of Five Centuries. Exh. cat. Golden Gate International Exposition, San Francisco, 1939: no. 81a, repro.

1939: McCall, George Henry. Masterpieces of art: Catalogue of European paintings and sculpture from 1300-1800. Edited by Wilhelm R. Valentiner. Exh. cat. New York World's Fair, New York, 1939: 97, no. 201.

1941: Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 210, repro.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 99-100, no. 56.

1942: National Gallery of Art. Book of illustrations. 2nd ed. Washington, 1942: 56, repro. 27, 240.

1944: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. Translated. New York, 1944: 106, color repro.

1949: National Gallery of Art. Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 92, repro.

1956: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1956: 44, repro.

1957: Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. London, 1957: pl. 112.

1960: Baird, Thomas P. Dutch Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Ten Schools of Painting in the National Gallery of Art 7. Washington, 1960: 34, color repro.

1960: The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 20.

1963: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 192, repro.

1965: National Gallery of Art. Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. Washington, 1965: 69.

1966: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1: 240, color repro.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 61, repro.

1973: Sonnenburg, Hubertus von. "Technical Comments." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 31, no. 4 (Summer 1973): unpaginated, fig. 84 (detail).

1975: National Gallery of Art. European paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. Washington, 1975: 178, repro.

1975: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: 288, no. 384, color repro.

1980: Sutton, Peter C. Pieter de Hooch: Complete Edition with a Catalogue Raisonné. Oxford, 1980: 85, no. 35a.

1981: Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Jan Vermeer. New York, 1981: 22, fig. 16.

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: 219.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 288, no. 378, color repro.

1984: Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Painting in the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 1984: 28-29, repro.

1985: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. Washington, 1985: 205, repro.

1985: Rumsey, Thomas R. Men and women in revolution and war, 1600-1815. Wellesley Hills, 1985: 53.

1988: Clark, Henry Nichols Blake. Francis W. Edmonds: American Master in the Dutch Tradition. Exh. cat. Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth; New-York Historical Society. Washington, D.C., 1988: 70, 71 fig. 40.

1988: Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Jan Vermeer. Masters of Art. 2nd rev. ed. New York, 1988: 20, fig. 16.

1992: National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1992: 132, repro.

1995: Fiero, Gloria K. The Age of the Baroque and the European Enlightenment. The Humanistic Tradition 4. 2nd ed. [7th ed. 2015] Madison, 1995: 45-46, fig. 22.5.

1995: Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, 1995: 139-142, color repro. 141.

1996: Kersten, Michiel C.C., and Daniëlle H.A.C. Lokin. Delft masters, Vermeer's contemporaries: illusionism through the conquest of light and space. Exh. cat. Stedelijk Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft. Zwolle, 1996: 112, fig. 97.

1997: Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Vermeer: The Complete Works. New York, 1997: 6, fig. 9.

1998: Fiero, Gloria K. Faith, Reason and Power in the Early Modern World. The Humanistic Tradition 4. 3rd ed. New York, 1998: frontispiece, repro.

1998: Sutton, Peter C. Pieter de Hooch, 1629-1684. Exh. cat. Dulwich Picture Gallery, London; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford. New Haven, 1998: 126-127, no. 19, repro.

1999: Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. "Exhibition review: Pieter de Hooch. Dulwich and Hartford." The Burlington Magazine 141, no. 1151 (February 1999): fig. 68.

2000: Kunzle, David. "The Soldier Redeemed: Art and Reality in a Dutch Province at War 1650-1672: Gerard Ter Borch in Deventer." Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 27 (2000): 293-294, repro.

2000: Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. The Public and the Private in the Age of Vermeer. Exh. cat. Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. London, 2000: 18, fig. 12.

2001: Liedtke, Walter A., Michiel Plomp, and Axel Rüger. Vermeer and the Delft school. Exh. cat. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Gallery, London. New Haven, 2001: no. 33, 288-230.

2001: Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA II: Covers and Essays from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago, 2001: 62-63, color repro.

2002: Kunzle, David. From criminal to courtier: the soldier in Netherlandish art 1550-1672. History of warfare. Leiden, 2002: 10: 617, fig. 17.18.

2003: Waagen, Gustav Friedrich. Treasures of Art in Great Britain. Translated by Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake. Facsimile edition of London 1854. London, 2003: 2:130.

2007: Meijer, Bert W. Vermeer: la ragazza alla spinetta e i pittori di Delft. Exh. cat. Foro Boario, Modena. Florence, 2007: 124-125, no. 10, repro.

Related Terms

31D12: adolescents
41A2: doorkijk
41A51: courtyard
41C12: drinking
42F51: maid
45B6: soldier off-duty
49D7: mathematical perspective

A Dutch Courtyard, 1658/1660