PIETER DE HOOCH, 1629–1684
835 The Courtyard of a House in Delft

Neil MacLaren, revised and expanded by Christopher Brown, 1991

Extracted from:
Neil MacLaren; revised and expanded by Christopher Brown, The Dutch School 1600–1900 (London: National Gallery Publications Limited, 1991).

Plate 173

The tablet above the arch has the following legend carved in Gothic letters: ( · it?) ( · · ) ( · ) te ·hyronimusdale / wil(t?) (t?) ntie tsamhey(t?) / begheven w( · · )t w(y?) mu( · ) n / eerst dalle wijlle wy w( · )rden / verheven anno 1614.

Signed left, at the base of the archway: PDH/An^o 1658· (An^o in monogram).

Oil on canvas, 73.5 × 60 cm (28¹⁵⁄₁₆ × 23⅝).

Cleaned in 1954–5.

Cross‐sections revealed a single pale fawn or buff ground of moderate thickness which on analysis proved to consist of lead white with an admixture of chalk (calcium carbonate) coloured by sparsely scattered particles of brown and yellowish ochre and charcoal black. The use of a lightish fawn ground shows some affinity with Vermeer’s technique, although his canvases usually have two layers of lightly tinted ground each based on lead white. There is a close similarity with the light‐coloured ground of No. 4042: Carel Fabritius, A Young Man in a Fur Cap and a Cuirass, which was also found to be a mixture of lead white and chalk containing ochre and charcoal particles. The detection of aluminium in the blue‐green of the grass in the bottom right‐hand corner implies the use of a yellow lake pigment. Yellow lakes (the so‐called ‘Dutch Pink’ or [page 1.200]‘Schietgeel’) are probably the most light‐fugitive of all pigments used in the artist’s palette. It seems likely, therefore, that the foliage in No. 835 was originally much greener than it is now, the yellow component having faded, leaving the blue (azurite) unchanged. It also seems likely that the blue of the sky has both faded and discoloured, since the blue pigment is smalt, though the small proportion of smalt suggests that it was never an intense blue. Examination of the blue skirt of the woman under magnification reveals that this is also smalt, of a deeper blue and larger particle size. With an increase in the refractive index of the medium with age the smalt paint is likely to have become more translucent, and does appear so in the picture, and very likely duller and paler in tone.

Discussion

The stone tablet seen above the archway was originally over the entrance to the Hieronymusdale Cloister in Delft, which was on the Oude Delft canal, opposite the end of the Nieuwstraat. The tablet has survived and is now set in the wall of the garden behind No. 157, Oude Delft. The legend on the actual tablet is: ‘dit·is·in· sint·hieronimus·daelle / willen·v·tot·pacientie·en·lijdt‐ / saemheijt·begeeven / wandt·wij·muetten·eerst daelle / willen·wij·worden·verheeuen·1614.’¹ (‘This is in St Jerome’s vale, if you wish to retire to patience and meekness. For we must first descend if we wish to be raised.’)

In the variant of the same date in the Byng collection (Fig. 44) the legend on the tablet, although it does not follow the original exactly,² is nevertheless nearer to it than that on the National Gallery version, especially in the division of the lines (Figs. 45a and b). This, together with the improved disposition of the figures in the National Gallery picture, suggests that the latter may be the later version of the two.

Four other pictures by de Hooch bear the same date as No. 835;³ no earlier dated works by him are known (see also the biographical notice on pages 195–6).

See No. 834 above for other pictures in which the young woman appears. The same child served as model in the Byng picture.

VERSION: A variant of this composition, also signed and dated 1658, with different figures and variations in the architecture, is in the collection of the Hon. Julian Byng.⁴ A replica of the Byng version, with very slight variations, was imported from Holland by Chaplin in 1839, according to Smith.⁵

COPIES: A copy was sold at Christie’s, 12 May 1961 (lot 183);⁶ another was in a private collection in Holland in 1939;⁷ another was in the van den Eeckhout sale, Paris, 9 March 1861 (lot 47);⁸ a drawn copy by J. Buys (1724–1801) was in the Ploos van Amstel sale in Amsterdam, 3 March 1800, no. 30 (sold to de Graat for 61 guilders); a drawn copy by C. Buys (1745–1826) was in the Engleberts sale, Amsterdam, 14 December 1807, no. 3 (bought by de Vries). There was a drawing by Jan Stolker (1729–85) in the de Jongh sale, Rotterdam, 26 March 1810, no. 4: ‘naar P. de Hooge. Hironymus Dale, een oud gestigt te Delft, breeder op de achterzijde van de teekening omschreven’. This drawing was later sold at a sale in Rotterdam on 4 June 1828, no. 7. It could be a copy of No. 835 or of the variant in the Byng collection.

PROVENANCE: In the Pieter de Smeth van Alphen sale, Amsterdam, 1–2 August 1810 (lot 46),⁹ probably bought by Yperen for Backer¹⁰ (2,075 guilders); bought in 1825 from Backer’s widow, Mme J(?) W(?) Backer of Amsterdam, by W. Brondgeest (10,750 guilders) for W. Emmerson,¹¹ who sold it to Sir Robert Peel, Bart., before 1833.¹² Purchased with the Peel collection, 1871.

REFERENCES:

General: Smith No. 50; HdG No. 291; Sutton, op. cit. , cat. no. 34

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