A Popular Handbook to the National Gallery, Volume I, Foreign Schools / Including by Special Permission Notes Collected from the Works of John Ruskin

by Unknown

834. A DUTCH INTERIOR.

Pieter de Hooch (Dutch: 1630-about 1677). See 794.

This picture is interesting as enabling us to discern the painter's technical process. "The more luminous parts of it, such as the costumes of the two men at the table, are painted in semi-opaque colour over a brilliant orange ground. Here and there the orange may be seen peeping out, and its presence elsewhere gives a peculiar pearliness to the tints laid upon it. De Hooch painted very thinly. In this picture the maid with the brazier is an afterthought. She is painted over the tiles and other details of the background, which now show through her skirts. Before she was put in, this space to the right was occupied by an old gentleman with a white beard and moustache, and a wide-brimmed hat, all of which can be descried under the brown of the mantelpiece" (Armstrong: Notes on the National Gallery, pp. 36, 37).