Pieter De Hooch: From the Shadow of Vermeer
On Monday October 12th1654, shortly after half past eleven in the morning, the Dutch city of Delft ‘exploded’. ‘The Delft Thunderclap’ , as it became known, was caused when a gunpowder store-all 40 tonnes of it , blew up. So powerful was the blast, it was heard 150 kilometers away. A quarter of the city was destroyed, hundreds were killed, including the artist Carel Fabricius, ( he of The Goldfinch). Trees were sheared off to stumps, houses were razed down to heaps of ash. In such a God fearing 17th century Calvinist society, many naturally believed it was the end of the world, with the gates of hell opening, and God’s wrath cascading down on the town. But out of devastation came a new way of seeing the city. Where buildings had collapsed and disappeared, new sight lines were created and in turn, completely new perspectives. So while part of Delft may have been left in ruins, the way the city was depicted by artists began to change as a new cityscape was redefined. Painters like Egbert van der Poel (see above) began to produce cityscapes, which created a powerful identity, and civic pride expressed by the prominent church towers left standing.
One artist in particular, the 17thcentury Dutch Golden Age painter, Pieter de Hooch, opted for a unique approach. An exhibition recently opened at the Museum Prinsenhof in Delft, where he worked throughout the 1650s, makes an intriguing connection between this new genre of the public cityscape and the private surroundings of the home. Like his contemporaries de Hooch (pronounced De Hoak), included the familiar towers, but incorporated them into people’s private surroundings: courtyards, alleyways and gardens, which were hidden from passers by, now bathed in new sources of light from the blasted skyline. This innovation, according to the curators, was entirely new, a ‘spectacular innovation in painting’ no less. It’s as if the outside presence and authority of Delft’s public landmarks somehow gives us license to venture into the inside private lives of its citizens, and turns their mundane routines into symbolic and integral parts of the well-ordered state.
Pieter De Hooch, A Dutch Courtyard, c 1658-60,National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C, with the tower of the Nieuwe Kerk rising above the wooden fence
Pieter de Hooch, The Bedroom, c 1660-62, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
De Hooch’s paintings from his Delft years are quiet, intimate captured moments of the household where nothing seems out of place, even the courtyards are free of clutter. Sunlight streams through regularly cleansed panes; shafts of light discreetly illuminate one or two damp floor tiles, freshly washed. Home is where the mop is. Cleanliness in Calvinist Delft is next to Godliness, if in doubt, look up at that church tower for proof. Simon Schama, whose insightful study of Dutch culture in the Golden Age, The Embarrassment of Riches, is particularly revealing about the Dutch obsession with what he describes as ‘militant’ cleaning. A clean home was the social and political bedrock-‘the saving grace of Dutch culture’. Pieter de Hooch’s depictions of tidy courtyards and pristine interiors are stilled lives, testaments to that Dutch 17thcentury obsession with the home as a window into greater themes of morality and patriotism. Marie Kondo, the self-styled ‘organizing consultant’- has made millions telling people how to de-clutter their life with her publishing sensation, ‘The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up’. De Hooch’s domestic goddesses of Delft were way ahead of the game.
De Hooch turned daily routines into enigmatic atmospheric dramas, bathed in such light as to make them devotional in quality. Domestic virtue equals religious conviction. In Mother’s Duty, shown below, a woman sits quietly with her daughter’s head in her lap, buttery sunlight illuminates her starched collar and smooth forehead, as she carefully delouses the girl’s hair. The details of the space are understated but breathtaking. Each room in the painting has its own illumination and reflections of light, but not a speck of dust! A small dog gazes out, inviting us to look to the sunlight that drifts through the doorway of a smaller room with an open window; you can almost smell the freshness of the air. More light from the high window on the right allows us a glimpse of the bed with starched linen covers on well-plumped pillows. His colours are rich and velvety; this is comfort food from a painter’s palette. Who knew nit check could be so beatific? An ordinary, and as every parent knows, loathsome task, becomes extraordinary.
Pieter de Hooch, A Mother Delousing her Child’s Hair, known as Mother’s Duty, c 1660-61, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
For an artist who produced some 160 works in his lifetime, (Vermeer produced 35), there is surprisingly little known about his life. He was born in 1629,in Rotterdam, just 15 km from Delft, the son of a bricklayer. He settled in Delft in 1652, where he most probably would have met his younger contemporary, Johannes Vermeer, a colleague at the painters’ Guild. Vermeer is the obvious comparison here and the curators of this current exhibition want us to reassess De Hooch not in the shadow but from the shadow of Vermeer. Probably it was de Hooch, the slightly older artist, who inspired Vermeer into taking the art of domestic stillness into something altogether more mesmeric. But let’s not underestimate de Hooch. While Vermeer’s subjects were more entrancing and subtly composed, and yes, he probably was a better painter, de Hooch welcomes us into interior scenes, which are infused with touching naturalism; it is hard not to feel emotionally immersed.
Delft was the city that shaped his artistic identity, and it is where he did his best work, so it seems astonishing that this is the first retrospective to be held in the Netherlands, let alone mainland Europe. The last solo exhibition was held at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery more than twenty years ago. In the Prinsenhof show, a collection of 30 paintings, trace de Hooch’s artistic development, from his early, rather clichéd images of soldiers living it up in taverns and guardrooms, through to the atmospheric courtyards and front rooms of Delft, to aspirational Amsterdam where he moved to in 1662. There his style changed again, and not for the better. The wealthy burghers of northern Europe’s prosperous banking centre look bored and disengaged with their luxurious drapes and marble floors. Their homes are showcases not nurturing nests and de Hooch is clearly more engaged with the accoutrements of frugal domesticity.
De Hooch’s most compelling works hold narratives in front of us so we can choose to fill in the gaps and yet the end of his life remains a mystery with many gaps yet to fill. By the 1670s prices for paintings in Holland began to stagnate and de Hooch, along with most of his colleagues, must have been facing financial hardship. Compared to his contemporaries, his paintings never commanded particularly high prices, but with large parts of Holland occupied by French troops by 1672, the economy and therefore the art market collapsed. It had been thought he ended up in a mental hospital, but recent research has established it was his son, also called Pieter, who was committed in 1679, aged just 24. After that there is no trace of de Hooch, his wife or his remaining 6 children. We don’t even know where he is buried.
De Hooch presented us with comforting, non-threatening glimpses of everyday life in 17thcentury Holland, which however much they may have been contrived or imagined, still speak to us in a visual language we can understand. With de Hooch, there truly is no place like home.
A version of this article also appears in the forthcoming edition of Standpoint Magazine
Pieter de Hooch:From the Shadow of Vermeer,Museum Prinsenhof, Delft October 11th, 2019-February 16th,2020.