Pieter de Hooch

Pieter Hendricksz. de Hooch, was a Dutch Golden Age painter famous for his genre works of quiet domestic scenes with an open doorway. He was a contemporary, in the Delft Guild of St. Luke, of Jan Vermeer with whom his work shares themes and style. De Hooch was first recorded in Delft on 5 August 1652, when he and another painter, Hendrick van der Burgh witnessed the signing of a will. He was active in 1683, but his date of death is unknown (his son Pieter died in 1684, a date often wrongly given for the father).

Biography
De Hooch was born in Rotterdam to Hendrick Hendricksz de Hooch, a bricklayer, and Annetge Pieters, a midwife, baptised at the Reformed Church in Rotterdam in 1629. He was the eldest of five children and outlived all of his siblings, evidently raised in a working class home. Though, his father was described as a "master bricklayer", hence a skilled artisan required to be a member of the guild. Little is known of his early life, and most archival evidence suggests he worked in Rotterdam, Delft, and Amsterdam. According to his first biographer Arnold Houbraken, he studied art in Haarlem under the landscape painter Nicolaes Berchem at the same time as Jacob Ochtervelt and was known for his "kamergezichten" or "room-views" with ladies and gentlemen in conversation. But de Hooch's work seems to continue in the spirit of Hendrik Sorgh, an older Rotterdam painter who had a special affinity for organising figures in interiors.

Beginning in 1650, he worked as a painter and servant for a linen-merchant and art collector named Justus de la Grange in Rotterdam. His service for the merchant required him to accompany him on his travels to The Hague, Leiden, and Delft, to which he moved in 1652, settling on Oude Delft 161 with de la Grange. Later, he lived next to the former Saint Hieronymus convent, once situated between Oude Delft and Westvest. It is likely that de Hooch handed over most of his works to la Grange during this period in exchange for board and other benefits, as this was a common commercial arrangement for painters at the time, and a later inventory recorded that la Grange possessed eleven of his paintings.

De Hooch was married in Delft in 1654 to Jannetje van der Burch, possibly sister of Hendrick van der Burgh, by whom he fathered seven children. While in Delft, de Hooch is also believed to have learned from the painters Carel Fabritius and Nicolaes Maes, who were early members of the Delft School. He became a member of the painters' guild of Saint Luke in 1655 (two years after Vermeer). Though, he must have faced financial difficulties, as he was unable to pay the admission fee of 12 guilders. His daughter Anna was born in Delft on 14 November 1656. Based on the fact that his wife attended a baptism in Amsterdam in 1660, it has been determined that he moved to Amsterdam by then, though the success of the trekschuit by then meant that a trip to Amsterdam could be made easily in a day.

Little is known of de Hooch's living arrangements in Amsterdam, though it has been established that he had contact with Emanuel de Witte through a lawsuit brought against de Witte. The burial records in Amsterdam for two of de Hooch's children, dated June 1663 and March 1665, indicate that he resided on Regulierspad and Engelspad, respectively. These "paths" were situated outside the old city walls and were known for accommodating some of the city's poorest inhabitants, sharply contrasting his affluent clients in Amsterdam. In 1668, he was living in the Konijnenstraat near the Lauriergracht, where he stayed for the next two years at least. His third son was baptized in 1672. In 1674, de Hooch's financial situation was meagre enough to escape the tax registers entirely, likely a result of the declining art market in the Dutch Republic, following the onerous Rampjaar, which hugely strained the economy and all facets of Dutch cultural activity. In his later years, de Hooch painted more, and often larger paintings, measuring over 100 centimetres.

The date of his death is unknown. For a significant period, it was believed that de Hooch died in 1684 as a resident in the Amsterdam dolhuis, a lunatic asylum. Despite this, official records from that institution reveal that the Pieter de Hooch who died there was, in fact, the artist's son, who also bore the name Pieter. The registration of his son Pieter Pietersz. de Hooch at the Dolhuis in 1679 is noted as the last record of de Hooch in Amsterdam.

In 2017 the Turing Foundation sponsored a new research project for the Delft Prinsenhof museum and the Rijksmuseum to work on a new overview exhibition focussing on the works in their collection, to be presented in a combined exhibition 2019-2020.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2025