In
the 1650s, Genre, representing Dutch’s everyday life scenes, was Pieter de
Hooch’s (1629-1684) painting style choice. Coincidentally, Genre was Johannes
Vermeer’s (1632-1675) painting style. Johannes Vermeer became more recognizable
and famous than Pieter de Hooch. Vermeer was three years younger than de Hooch.
Both lived in Delft, Holland in the !600s. This era was known as the Dutch Golden
Age (1609-1702/1713). Apparently, there is no certainty that the two painters had
a direct artistic influence in each other’s work, but we can assume the contrary
by several facts: that Mr. Vermeer owned an Inn and tavern “Mechelen," according to
There
were many life decisions and other factors that changed Pieter de Hooch’s art
and life. Comparing to Mr. Vermeer’s life opportunities, Mr. Pieter de Hooch
was a Delft outsider, poor, had seven children and left the city of Delft to Amsterdam
in early 1660s (burial records for two of his children, in 1663 and 1665, set their
address in a poor neighborhood outside Amsterdam)
Mr.
Pieter de Hooch was granted his first solo exhibition, with 39 paintings, from
December 17, 1998 to February 27, 1999. The honorary patrons of the exhibition
were two privileged women, Cherie Booth Blair and Hillary Rodham-Clinton, whose
husbands, respectively, were the Britain’s Prime Minister and the U.S.A.
President at that time. The museums that hosted Pieter de Hooch’s exhibition
are the oldest museums in each country: in England the Dulwich Picture Gallery
(outside London) founded in 1811, and, in the U.S.A. the Wadsworth Atheneum in
Hartford, Connecticut, founded in 1842. Peter Sutton, organizer of the
exhibition and director of the Wadsworth Atheneum argues that de Hooch was
partly responsible for Vermeer’s shift from “large scale biblical and
mythological subjects to cabinet-size genre scenes and cityscapes in the late
1650s.”
For the first time in 400 years, a solo Pieter de
Hooch’s exhibition at the Museum Prinsenhof Delft took place from October 11,
2019 to February 16, 2020, where 26 masterpieces from important museums of the
world were shown.
Johannes
Vermeer’s known survived oeuvre is a total of 34 paintings. According to Mr.
Peter C. Sutton, who catalogued Pieter de Hooch’s oeuvre, and wrote a book
about the artist, that was published in 1998, states that: “164 paintings
believed to be authentic, 15 questionable works, 294 which are known only
through descriptions, and 43 that were incorrectly attributed to de Hooch.”
“Courtyard, Delft” painting's scene takes place outdoors. We cannot determine if the brick layered floor patio/courtyard corresponds to the house’s front or back. The back/front of the house is depicted in the right background of the composition. The courtyard/patio is enclosed by a tall white brick wall with a need of a fresh coat of paint due to the signs of wall peeling and decay. The upper ¼ of the wall/fence shows several layers of well- drawn terracotta colored rectangular bricks. Above the wall/fence, on the left background, one can see the presence of a city landscape. Standing out is the main tower of the church of Delft. On the left foreground, at the lower left corner, a very dark entrance/exit passage is seen. A hardly distinguishable set of four or five stairs, with a questionable wood fence versus a wood handrail on the right side of the stairs is seen. The stairs passage, maybe, takes a person to a Delft city street. We can only guess this fact due to the houses that can be seen across and over the tall brick fence/wall that covers our vision of the street per se. The white brick wall acts as a boundary between the private property and the city. The wall (vertical/diagonal line) is on the left side of the patio or courtyard, and changes direction in a sharp corner, continuing by facing the viewer (horizontal line) and ending, almost at the center of the composition, where it touches a dark brown wood door (the left side of the door). The vertical line of the left side of the door continues upwards, by becoming the left wall of the house that disappears (without seeing the roof of the house) in the upper edge of the painting. The image of the house occupies the right half of the background, as a dark brown rectangular form, with details of windows hardly noticeable due to the dark (value) of the hue. In the corner of the brick white wall, a round water well is located, where a woman is lifting or lowering a water terracotta jar in the well. We know that it is a woman, because of the attire she is wearing, a long blue skirt, with a long sleeves yellow blouse that is covered by a light brown vest. She is wearing a white apron and a white Dutch style cap covers her hair. She is in a profile view. We cannot distinguish her facial features. Her right arm is elevated over her head, we do not see her right arm. We only see the right hand clenched to a cord that is hanging from a piece of brown wood post that is taller than the wall/fence. Her left hand is closer to a terracotta jar, that is only partially seen, which round handle has the cord looped on it. The lady’s height is almost the same as the fence/wall. Her attention is towards the action of gathering water facing the well and the wall/fence. The well’s walls are deteriorating by the signs of peeling, and cracking stimulating the sense of tactile texture. We can enhance our sense of smell by the presence of mold in the walls, the fresh water from the well and the sense of hearing by the noises of the street, the wind, the human voices and the splash of water. The well has a rectangular dark wood cover that is open resting diagonally over the wall/fence. Also, the white wall is deteriorating by the presence of the same signs as the well wall that was previously described.
With
both sleeves rolled up above her elbows, a woman is standing behind a wood
barrel or drum. The wood barrel over which a flat piece of wood gives the shape
and use of a table, where an oval wood container or bucket has white clothing
inside it. She is in the position of washing clothes. Her left hand holding/grasping
the edge of the bucket and the right hand in a fist touching the clothes. Her
body is facing the viewer, but she is looking at a small child (sex
undetermined). The size of the child can be compared to the barrel’s size, that
is up to the thigh level of the woman, also it is the same size of the water
well. Understanding that the artist used aerial or atmospheric perspective when
positioning the human figures in the composition. We can notice that the woman
washing the clothes and the child are closer to the viewer and larger in size than
the woman who is working at the water well.
The woman, on the right side of the composition, is wearing a dark brown long skirt with rolled up long sleeves red blouse, with white undergarment, and a light brown vest that opens in front, closed by the crisscrossing of a ribbon. She also wears a white Dutch cap covering her hair, the same as the child but the child’s head cap color is dark brown. The child is wearing a feet long dark brown coat opened in the front where one can see a long skirt and a white shirt buttoned up to the neck. The child is standing at the left side of the barrel close by the woman. The child’s eyes are directed towards the cloth bucket where the cloths are being washed by hand. One can see and imagine that the spots surrounding the front and side of the barrel in the brick floor is water that splashed out of the bucket by the work done by the woman. The brick floor is drawn brick by brick and maintain linear perspective towards the door of the house, which its lower ¾ is closed and the upper ¼ is opened. A door, which style is called a Dutch door, stable door or double-hung. From the ledge of the closed portion of the door a dark blue cloth is hanging.
Also, we can see the trunk and branches of a probable climbing vine plant or tree against the house’s wall, which leaves catch the light coming from the left upper corner where a sky with clouds was painted. The light of the sun moves around the composition in a serene and evenly distribution. The sunlight hits the woman who is washing the clothes, the child’s face and shirt, the woman standing close to the water well, the white wall, a decorated white china plate with a soup bowl (over the plate) that is set in the floor close to the entrance/exit passage with stairs, the brick floor and the architectural landscape of the city. On the left foreground, objects are displayed as a still life arrangement on the brick floor. The still life objects are a china plate and soup bowl, a circular wood bucket, three or four terracotta bowls in different positions and a broom with its long handle (set as a diagonal line) facing the viewer and its sweeper end directed towards the Dutch door of the house, which somewhat corresponds to the center or focal point of the composition. The city’s architectural landscape, that is seen over the property’s fence/wall, shows the main tower of Delft’s church and red roofs of houses with the typical front house gables of Europe/Holland. We see a step patterned gable that was starting to be built in 17th century buildings, but most of them are neck shaped gables in this painting. It is hardly noticeable in the painting the winches that was commonly seen in the front and top of the houses to lift heavy items to the top floors in that era. We can see a similar system of winch and cord to lift the bucket of water in the water well scene. Also, we can see, a lot of vegetation, trees and bushes painted scattered in the city landscape.
The
scene in the painting is the routinely and anonymous silent work of women who
are performing simple household chores. In this painting, two women in contact
with water, as a symbol of life, cleanliness, purity, movement, flow, and other
moral, social, and political messages/propaganda and/or symbolisms. The Dutch
as travelers of the sea, explorers of the world and tamers of the winds
(windmills) and waters by construction of dams, canals, and mills. The city of
Delft as a maritime port. All these sentiments of pride of their
accomplishments and culture is what the painters of the school of Delft were
asked to paint by the emerging middle social class in Dutch society of the 17th
century. These genre paintings were displayed in the houses of middle-income
families as a reminder of the duties of faithful and moral women in their
domestic and maternal roles. Then, as now, women’s household jobs were done by
the ladies of the house themselves or by paid maids. We do not know the
relationship among the different human figures and/or with the painter of
“Courtyard, Delft.” This new realistic genre style of painting that depicted
common and anonymous people living and working in modest and orderly or neat home
rooms/interiors, courtyards and city streets were first created by the Delft
School painters who explored space, perspective, light, and color in their oeuvre.
Dutch painters were already known by their interest in depicting and perfecting
objects’ details and their choice of oil as media. Regarding perspective use,
it is interesting to notice that recent studies comparing Vermeer and de
Hooch’s paintings found that “both artists placed a pin with a string attached
to it at the vanishing point, in order to draw the necessary lines. In de
Hooch’s paintings pinholes have been observed in at least a dozen works and
this can be seen with the naked eye.”
Pieter
de Hooch was born in Rotterdam and baptized in the Reformed Church, his father
was a bricklayer and his mother a midwife. Lucrezia Walker wrote an article in
“The Tablet,” in September 1998, stating that: “It is tempting to see the role
of both parents in his subjects: his mother in the maternal figures with babies
and children and tending to the need of family and home; and his father in the
very bricks and mortar of the city views, picked out with an extraordinary
naturalism.”
Pieter
de Hooch apprenticed in art with Ludolph de Jongh in Rotterdam and Nicolaes
Pietersz Berchem in Haarlem. He moved to Delft in the 1650s and got married
with Jannetge van der Burch, a local lady. In 1655, he joined the town’s Guild
of artists of Saint Luke and was a member of the Delft School of Painters. He also
had a second trade as a cloth merchant.
After
their independence from the kingdom of Spain, in 1648, the Dutch did not built
stone palaces like France, but brick houses with tile walls and brick/stone
made streets that helped the Dutch community to engage in a social campaign of cleanliness
as a way to start the conversation stressing personal hygiene for the
prevention of diseases. Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), born in Delft, is
considered the father of microbiology, by adapting magnifying lenses used in
the clothing industry, and designed a single lens microscope that helped him
identify and describe microorganisms. It was the “constant scrubbing,
scrapping, sweeping, mopping, rubbing and washing” of their Dutch houses,
cities and streets that was first noticed by the foreign visitors of Dutch
cities at the time. It was mostly, Dutch women who were in charge of the
“constant scrubbing, scrapping, sweeping, mopping, rubbing, and washing” reason
why they became the inspiration of a new kind of leadership that by their
actions took care of the Dutch population’s well-being. This Dutch culture of
understanding cleanliness as a source of beauty was far advance than in the
rest of Europe.
As
Veronica Horwell, wrote in an article of “The Guardian,” in 1998, “…for
centuries, the low countries had been Europe’s main growers, makers and
exporters of linen, the cloth of cleanliness before cotton, the stuffs of
sheets, towels, tablecloths, and undergarments. The Dutch were connoisseurs of
starched linen next to the skin.
Pieter de Hooch left us, through his paintings, a detailed record of what he was witnessing in the Dutch Golden Age, a nascent democratic society that was achieving the motto: “mens sana in corpore sano” that translates in English: “a healthy mind in a healthy body. One of Pieter de Hooch’s historical record is the Toledo Museum of Art’s “Courtyard, Delft” painting.
References:
"An Exhibition of Dutch Pictures of the Seventeenth Century." Dutch Painting: The Golden Age. The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Toledo Museum of Art; The Art Gallery of Toronto, 1954-1955.
Janson, Jonathan and Adelheid Rech. Vermeer Delft Today:
Mechelen. n.d. 26 October 2020.
<http://www.essentialvermeer.com/delft/delft_today/mechelen.html>.
Johnson, Paul. "Dulwich wakes up to salute the man who
painted nothing happening." Spectator 26 September 1998.
Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A
Global History. 16th Edition. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning Inc., 2020.
Manson, J. B. Dutch Painting. London, England:
Avalon Press and Central Institute of Art and Design, 1945.
Masters in Art: Pieter de Hooch. Boston, MA, n.d.
McAuley, Liam. "Pieter de Hooch: A Misunderstood
Master?" HH 1997.
News, The Toledo Club. About the Cover: Interior.
September 1971.
Pieter de Hooch. n.d.
17 October 2020.
<https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/artists/pieter-de-hooch>.
Seeing the Invisible: van Leeuwenhoek's first glimpses of
the microbial world. 21 October 2014. 17
October 2020. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePnbkNVdPio&feature=emb_logo>.
Updike, John. "More Light on Delft." The New
York Review 18 February 1999.
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