Interior with Servant

This is one of countless nineteenth-century paintings evoking the art of the seventeenth century - popular because of its decorative qualities and often, for painters from the Low Countries, for its nationalist appeal. The composition of this watercolour is indebted to paintings by Pieter de Hooch. Van Hove turned increasingly in the latter stages of his career to seventeenth-century interior scenes reminiscent of de Hooch.