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Lot Essay
The son of a bricklayer and a midwife, Pieter de Hooch began life in relatively humble circumstances but ascended to become one of the most exceptional genre painters in the Dutch seventeenth century. According to Arnold Houbraken, de Hooch studied under the Haarlem landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem alongside Jacob Ochtervelt, who, like de Hooch, would go on to specialize in genre scenes with striking perspectival effects. Despite the quality of de Hooch’s paintings, documentary evidence suggests he required a secondary source of income to make ends meet: a document of 1652 describes him not only as a painter but a servant to the wealthy linen merchant Justus de La Grange, who acquired at least eleven paintings by the artist. Though initially a painter of guardroom scenes and peasant interiors, by the latter 1650s de Hooch began to paint middle class interior and sunny courtyard scenes with Delft motifs. A move to Amsterdam, then as now the largest and most affluent city in Holland, by April 1661 saw de Hooch take on more elegant interiors with sumptuously dressed figures. Such paintings would sustain the artist for the remainder of his career.
From about 1670, de Hooch became both a more productive artist and one whose compositions were more frequently executed on a grand scale. His increased productivity was no doubt driven both by the contemporary popularity of his works and the financial straits he was then experiencing, the latter in part due to the economic malaise that set into the Dutch art market following the disastrous Rampjaar of 1672, when the French invaded the Netherlands. By producing a greater number of paintings, de Hooch may have been able to offset the lower profits he received from the sale of each work. Indeed, nearly fifty percent of de Hooch’s paintings are datable to 1670 or later. This includes more than a dozen – the present painting among them – whose largest dimension exceeds one meter (Sutton, op. cit., 1998, p. 58). By contrast, only four paintings executed before 1670 are of a comparably large scale (see Sutton, op. cit., 1980, nos. 24, 51, 53 and 66).
Despite the financial pressures de Hooch personally experienced in the last decades of his life, his late interior scenes depict figures who appear to become ever more prosperous. As here, they carry a more generalized, mannered appearance than those found in his earlier domestic scenes. Nowhere is this more evident in the present painting than the young woman dressed in white satin whose improbable frozen pose with one leg off the ground and right arm extended lends her the timeless elegance of a secular Angel Annunciate. A similar trend toward refinement can be found in the artistic production of other contemporary Dutch genre painters, including Jacob Ochtervelt, Eglon van der Neer and Caspar Netscher. The liveliness of this painting is shared with several late works in which couples are depicted openly embracing one another, including the Party, probably datable to 1675, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see Sutton, op. cit., 1980, no. 114).
The artist’s numerous scenes of people playing cards are a perfect cipher for his general artistic development and his willingness to return time and again to his favored subjects and designs. The earliest examples, like that datable to circa 1655 in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne (see Sutton, op. cit., 1980, no. 11), are relatively small in scale and staged within a modest domestic interior, whereas the present painting is roughly twice the size, enabling the painter to depict ever more expansive – and expensive – settings. Our painting ultimately derives from a work of smaller format datable to the 1660s in the Manchester Art Gallery (fig. 1). In both paintings, a group of elegant figures gather around a table before a large marble fireplace in a high-ceilinged room with marble floors. A large chimneypiece – the subject of which is indiscernible in the present painting – hangs above the fireplace, while a brass chandelier is hung from a large exposed ceiling beam. In the central right background, a doorway leads to an additional room or rooms before opening onto an exterior canal.
De Hooch has, however, made a number of changes when this painting is compared with the earlier example in Manchester. The main interior group includes two additional figures, one of whom, like the dog at his side, gazes directly out at the viewer, as if to engage his audience as he contemplates his next move. This is particularly unusual for de Hooch, who more frequently showed his figures either in lost profile or from behind. The dog makes frequent appearances in de Hooch’s paintings of the late 1660s and 1670s, including in his Portrait of the Jacott-Hoppesack Family of circa 1670 in the Amsterdams Museum (fig. 2). Further additions to increase the resplendence of the interior can be seen in the inclusion of the porcelain jar on the mantlepiece and the cloth wall hangings along the back wall. A soldier framed by the doorway in the painting’s background also adds a human presence.
Over the course of the seventeenth century, high life genre scenes like the present painting developed from sixteenth-century predecessors depicting biblical subjects like the story of the Prodigal Son. The popularity of this biblical story can equally be seen in its frequent adaptation in contemporary Dutch plays, a particularly good example of which is Willem Dircksz. Hooft’s aptly entitled Hedendaegsche Verlooren Son (Modern-Day Prodigal Son) of 1630. The inherent ambiguity of genre scenes depicting elegant figures drinking, smoking, carousing and gambling around a table allowed their viewer to interpret them as he or she wished. Much as with the Prodigal Son himself, some contemporary viewers no doubt reacted with a sense of moral condemnation, while others may have experienced a certain admiration for the subjects’ carefree convivial existence.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
This painting was first recorded as by far the finest of only twelve paintings that featured in the 1793 estate sale of Hendrik van Maarseveen (fig. 3), a collector chiefly known for his assemblage of more than 1700 drawings and some 2300 prints. The painting was rightly described in his sale as a ‘capitaal Stuk’ (‘capital piece’) but, despite its exceptional quality, evidently failed to find a buyer: an annotated copy of the catalogue in the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) includes the word ‘Opgehouden’ beside the lot. Its failure to find a buyer at the sale had less to do with its quality than the arbitrary preferences of eighteenth-century buyers. While de Hooch’s paintings were often included in the greatest eighteenth-century Dutch collections, they generally commanded relatively modest prices. In unpublished notes made during a trip to Holland in December 1784, the French dealer Paillet gave voice to this sentiment: ‘We do not place the paintings of this master in the first rank because of Metsu and Terburg, who treated the same genre with greater superiority’ (quoted in Sutton, op. cit., 1998, p. 12). Only at the beginning of the nineteenth century would attitudes toward de Hooch turn fully, catalyzed by the extraordinary de Smeth van Alphen sale of 1810 which featured both the artist’s Woman and child in an interior of circa 1658 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and his masterful A courtyard in Delft with a woman and child dated to the same year (National Gallery, London). English collectors like King George IV, Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, all of whom acquired paintings by de Hooch in the early nineteenth century, proved indispensable to developing interest in the artist.
By the third or fourth decade of the nineteenth century, the present painting had made its way into one such collection, that of the English timber merchant Edward Solly. Solly, who moved to Berlin in 1813 to oversee his family firm’s bulk purchases of Baltic timber and ship’s provisions, is perhaps best known today for selling his collection of roughly 3000 works to Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia (1770-1840), in 1821. 677 of these paintings, including masterpieces by the likes of Raphael and Petrus Christus, were selected to form a central part of the newly founded Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Following his return to London in 1821, Solly embarked upon the formation of a second collection, which included a tremendous number of cabinet paintings of the Dutch school. Solly had a particular penchant for de Hooch, having also owned the artist’s Courtyard of a house in Delft of 1658, which, when sold Christie’s, London, 11 December 1992, lot 104 for £4,400,000, set a world auction record for the artist that has yet to be surpassed (fig. 4).
Financial concerns forced Solly to sell much of his second collection, including the present painting, in a number of sales held between 1825 and 1837. When this painting appeared at auction in 1837, it was acquired by Christopher Talbot for his residence at Penrice Castle. Talbot was the son of Thomas Mansel Talbot (1747-1813), who, at the tender age of eleven, inherited the estates of Penrice and Margam. Over the course of several Tours of the Continent, the elder Talbot built a large collection of antiquities, many of which were acquired from Gavin Hamilton and Thomas Jenkins, as well as Old Masters, which he displayed at Penrice Castle and Margam Abbey, both designed for him by Anthony Keck (1726-1797). While his father favored works of the Italian School and acquired only a small number of Dutch pictures, including paintings by Nicolaes Berchem and Rembrandt, Christopher Talbot purchased largely Dutch and Flemish paintings, making a number of significant acquisitions in the 1830s and 1840s. The painting descended in the family until it was sold in 1966.
From about 1670, de Hooch became both a more productive artist and one whose compositions were more frequently executed on a grand scale. His increased productivity was no doubt driven both by the contemporary popularity of his works and the financial straits he was then experiencing, the latter in part due to the economic malaise that set into the Dutch art market following the disastrous Rampjaar of 1672, when the French invaded the Netherlands. By producing a greater number of paintings, de Hooch may have been able to offset the lower profits he received from the sale of each work. Indeed, nearly fifty percent of de Hooch’s paintings are datable to 1670 or later. This includes more than a dozen – the present painting among them – whose largest dimension exceeds one meter (Sutton, op. cit., 1998, p. 58). By contrast, only four paintings executed before 1670 are of a comparably large scale (see Sutton, op. cit., 1980, nos. 24, 51, 53 and 66).
Despite the financial pressures de Hooch personally experienced in the last decades of his life, his late interior scenes depict figures who appear to become ever more prosperous. As here, they carry a more generalized, mannered appearance than those found in his earlier domestic scenes. Nowhere is this more evident in the present painting than the young woman dressed in white satin whose improbable frozen pose with one leg off the ground and right arm extended lends her the timeless elegance of a secular Angel Annunciate. A similar trend toward refinement can be found in the artistic production of other contemporary Dutch genre painters, including Jacob Ochtervelt, Eglon van der Neer and Caspar Netscher. The liveliness of this painting is shared with several late works in which couples are depicted openly embracing one another, including the Party, probably datable to 1675, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (see Sutton, op. cit., 1980, no. 114).
The artist’s numerous scenes of people playing cards are a perfect cipher for his general artistic development and his willingness to return time and again to his favored subjects and designs. The earliest examples, like that datable to circa 1655 in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne (see Sutton, op. cit., 1980, no. 11), are relatively small in scale and staged within a modest domestic interior, whereas the present painting is roughly twice the size, enabling the painter to depict ever more expansive – and expensive – settings. Our painting ultimately derives from a work of smaller format datable to the 1660s in the Manchester Art Gallery (fig. 1). In both paintings, a group of elegant figures gather around a table before a large marble fireplace in a high-ceilinged room with marble floors. A large chimneypiece – the subject of which is indiscernible in the present painting – hangs above the fireplace, while a brass chandelier is hung from a large exposed ceiling beam. In the central right background, a doorway leads to an additional room or rooms before opening onto an exterior canal.
De Hooch has, however, made a number of changes when this painting is compared with the earlier example in Manchester. The main interior group includes two additional figures, one of whom, like the dog at his side, gazes directly out at the viewer, as if to engage his audience as he contemplates his next move. This is particularly unusual for de Hooch, who more frequently showed his figures either in lost profile or from behind. The dog makes frequent appearances in de Hooch’s paintings of the late 1660s and 1670s, including in his Portrait of the Jacott-Hoppesack Family of circa 1670 in the Amsterdams Museum (fig. 2). Further additions to increase the resplendence of the interior can be seen in the inclusion of the porcelain jar on the mantlepiece and the cloth wall hangings along the back wall. A soldier framed by the doorway in the painting’s background also adds a human presence.
Over the course of the seventeenth century, high life genre scenes like the present painting developed from sixteenth-century predecessors depicting biblical subjects like the story of the Prodigal Son. The popularity of this biblical story can equally be seen in its frequent adaptation in contemporary Dutch plays, a particularly good example of which is Willem Dircksz. Hooft’s aptly entitled Hedendaegsche Verlooren Son (Modern-Day Prodigal Son) of 1630. The inherent ambiguity of genre scenes depicting elegant figures drinking, smoking, carousing and gambling around a table allowed their viewer to interpret them as he or she wished. Much as with the Prodigal Son himself, some contemporary viewers no doubt reacted with a sense of moral condemnation, while others may have experienced a certain admiration for the subjects’ carefree convivial existence.
A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE
This painting was first recorded as by far the finest of only twelve paintings that featured in the 1793 estate sale of Hendrik van Maarseveen (fig. 3), a collector chiefly known for his assemblage of more than 1700 drawings and some 2300 prints. The painting was rightly described in his sale as a ‘capitaal Stuk’ (‘capital piece’) but, despite its exceptional quality, evidently failed to find a buyer: an annotated copy of the catalogue in the Netherlands Institute for Art History (RKD) includes the word ‘Opgehouden’ beside the lot. Its failure to find a buyer at the sale had less to do with its quality than the arbitrary preferences of eighteenth-century buyers. While de Hooch’s paintings were often included in the greatest eighteenth-century Dutch collections, they generally commanded relatively modest prices. In unpublished notes made during a trip to Holland in December 1784, the French dealer Paillet gave voice to this sentiment: ‘We do not place the paintings of this master in the first rank because of Metsu and Terburg, who treated the same genre with greater superiority’ (quoted in Sutton, op. cit., 1998, p. 12). Only at the beginning of the nineteenth century would attitudes toward de Hooch turn fully, catalyzed by the extraordinary de Smeth van Alphen sale of 1810 which featured both the artist’s Woman and child in an interior of circa 1658 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) and his masterful A courtyard in Delft with a woman and child dated to the same year (National Gallery, London). English collectors like King George IV, Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, all of whom acquired paintings by de Hooch in the early nineteenth century, proved indispensable to developing interest in the artist.
By the third or fourth decade of the nineteenth century, the present painting had made its way into one such collection, that of the English timber merchant Edward Solly. Solly, who moved to Berlin in 1813 to oversee his family firm’s bulk purchases of Baltic timber and ship’s provisions, is perhaps best known today for selling his collection of roughly 3000 works to Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia (1770-1840), in 1821. 677 of these paintings, including masterpieces by the likes of Raphael and Petrus Christus, were selected to form a central part of the newly founded Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Following his return to London in 1821, Solly embarked upon the formation of a second collection, which included a tremendous number of cabinet paintings of the Dutch school. Solly had a particular penchant for de Hooch, having also owned the artist’s Courtyard of a house in Delft of 1658, which, when sold Christie’s, London, 11 December 1992, lot 104 for £4,400,000, set a world auction record for the artist that has yet to be surpassed (fig. 4).
Financial concerns forced Solly to sell much of his second collection, including the present painting, in a number of sales held between 1825 and 1837. When this painting appeared at auction in 1837, it was acquired by Christopher Talbot for his residence at Penrice Castle. Talbot was the son of Thomas Mansel Talbot (1747-1813), who, at the tender age of eleven, inherited the estates of Penrice and Margam. Over the course of several Tours of the Continent, the elder Talbot built a large collection of antiquities, many of which were acquired from Gavin Hamilton and Thomas Jenkins, as well as Old Masters, which he displayed at Penrice Castle and Margam Abbey, both designed for him by Anthony Keck (1726-1797). While his father favored works of the Italian School and acquired only a small number of Dutch pictures, including paintings by Nicolaes Berchem and Rembrandt, Christopher Talbot purchased largely Dutch and Flemish paintings, making a number of significant acquisitions in the 1830s and 1840s. The painting descended in the family until it was sold in 1966.