THE BUTTERY
Pieter de Hooch (1632?-1681)
ieter de Hooch is a Dutch artist you are going to love. Usually you can tell his pictures by the checked or plaid floors. The floors in the homes in Holland are mostly made of squares of black and white marble. Did you ever see a cuter little girl than this one in the picture? She has come for her pitcher of milk. Her mother went to the "buttery" for it: a buttery is a place for keeping casks and barrels and bottles. We can see one end of the cask or barrel under the window in the buttery. Now look into the next room and see the chair on a little platform. That platform is quite common in the Dutch home and is probably the place where mother or grandmother sits to read or sew by the window. What a beautiful day it must be out of doors to make the rooms so cheerful and bright! Hooch loved the sunshine and used it to brighten every home he painted. The sunshine on the checked floors makes his pictures sing with joy and happiness.
We can find very little about the life of the "Dutch little masters," yet the pictures they have left us are among our greatest treasures: just little home scenes that you and I know about.
It is said that de Hooch often put in his people after he had finished painting his picture. In one picture he has added a girl near a fireplace to make the picture more balanced. We know that she was added after the picture was made, for we can see the plaid floor through her dress where the paint was too thin to cover the original floor. Such little things tell us something of the method of work of the Dutch painters.
Courtesy of Pratt Institute
Fig. 22. The Buttery. De Hooch. Ryks Museum, Amsterdam