Pieter de Hooch

1629 - after 1684

Pieter de Hooch is best known for his pictures of the domestic life of women and children, such as 'The Courtyard of a House in Delft' in the collection. His later paintings record fashionable life in the city of Amsterdam, and utilise a darker and richer range of colours.

The son of a bricklayer, de Hooch was born in Rotterdam. According to his early biographer Arnold Houbraken, he was trained by Nicolaes Berchem, one of the leading Dutch painters of Italianate landscapes, who was mainly active in Haarlem. In 1655 de Hooch joined the guild of St Luke in Delft. His works of the 1650s may be indebted to the perspectival studies of Carel Fabritius, who was in Delft by 1650. His work is also related in style to that of Johannes Vermeer, with whom he must have had contact.

In 1660 de Hooch moved to Amsterdam, where he is last recorded in 1679, when his son Pieter Pietersz de Hooch was admitted to the Amsterdam lunatic asylum. De Hooch’s last dated work is from 1684. The place and date of his death are unknown.

Paintings by Pieter de Hooch

A Man with Dead Birds, and Other Figures, in a Stable

Pieter de Hooch

A dog sniffs at a heap of dead birds on the floor, but the focus of this quiet scene seems to be on the young woman cradling her baby. She looks down at the creatures, her expression shuttered. The picture was originally quite different: beneath the birds, which were added during the nineteenth c...

Not on display

A Musical Party in a Courtyard

Pieter de Hooch

A small group of people meet to make music and enjoy each other’s company. We look over the back of a chair to see a young woman playing the violin. A second man smiles at the young woman sitting at her ease on the right. Pieter de Hooch has picked out her jewels, but without ostentation: a pearl...

Room 17

A Woman and her Maid in a Courtyard

Pieter de Hooch

We seem to be looking at a scene just outside a kitchen. A maid has brought a steaming cauldron out from the kitchen stove and placed it near the open drain in the courtyard. Apparently obeying her mistress, who stands in front of her, she seems to have taken the fish out of the cooking pot; perh...

Room 16

A Woman Drinking with Two Men

Pieter de Hooch

There is mystery in this room. One of the figures has her back to us, so we can’t see the expression on her face. But since the man behind the table seems to be using two clay pipes as a pretend violin and bow, and his companion gestures as though conducting a duet, she may be singing.Scenes left...

Not on display

The Courtyard of a House in Delft

Pieter de Hooch

In the sunlight of a quiet afternoon this courtyard seems to radiate tranquillity. Everything is still, including the figures: a young maid, clean and calm, who holds the hand of a little girl, and the shadowy figure of a woman in the passageway to the left, presumably the child’s mother, who tur...

Room 16