Pieter de Hooch | Baroque Era painter

Pieter de Hooch, Hooch also spelled Hoogh or Hooghe (baptized Dec. 20, 1629, Rotterdam, Neth-buried March 24, 1684, Amsterdam), Dutch genre painter of the Delft school, noted for his interior scenes and masterful use of light.

De Hooch was a pupil of Claes Berchem at Haarlem. From 1653 he was in the service of Justus de Grange and lived in Delft, The Hague, and Leiden. He was a member of the painters’ guild of Delft from 1654-1657, but after that date there are no traces of his career until about 1667, when his presence was recorded in Amsterdam.

His work, both in style and subject matter, shows some affinity with that of Johannes Vermeer, who was living in Delft at the same time. His paintings, like Vermeer’s, are small works that display perfect finish and a great power of compositional discrimination.

Though he sometimes painted open-air scenes -e.g., A Woman and Her Maid in a Court (1658)- and tavern genres -e.g., Backgammon Players (c. 1653)- he more typically painted two or three figures occupied with humble daily duties in a sober interior, the still atmosphere of which is broken only by the radiant entry of outdoor light illuminating the scene -e.g., The Pantry (c. 1658), A Mother Beside a Cradle (c. 1659-60), and At the Linen Closet (1663).

These depictions of the serene simplicity of Dutch domestic life are free of sentimentality. Largely done between about 1655 and 1663 while de Hooch was living in Delft, they are considered his best works.

In them he was preoccupied with the relation of light to different surfaces, the effect of enclosures and apertures on light intensity, the variation of tone, the complex arrangement of spatial units, and linear perspective. | © Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Hooch i‹hóokℎ› (o Hoogh), Pieter de - Pittore (n. Rotterdam 1629 - m. probabilmente ad Amsterdam dopo il 1684).

Allievo di N. Berchem a Haarlem, lavorò poi a Delft (dal 1653), dove poté conoscere l'opera di C. Fabricius e di J. Vermeer, e ad Amsterdam (dal 1662).

Cominciò col dipingere scene di soldati, vicine alle bambocciate, nelle quali già la luce gioca un ruolo importante; successivamente si dedicò a scene di genere collocate all'interno o nei cortili delle case olandesi, definendo con la stessa intensità ambienti, oggetti e personaggi.

Le sue opere, in particolare quelle eseguite tra il 1658-1670, sono tra le più raffinate e insieme popolari espressioni dell'arte dei Paesi Bassi e affascinano per il loro senso di domestica intimità, semplice e affettuosa, esaltata da una luce tersa e ferma e da una gamma cromatica densa di sfumature:

• Interno olandese e Cortile di una casa a Delft (Londra, National Gallery);
• La bevitrice (Parigi, Louvre);
• Madre presso la culla (Berlino, Gemäldegalerie);
• Interno con donne vicino a un guardaroba;
• Tre donne e un uomo nel cortile sul retro di una casa;
• Madre che spidocchia la figlia, noto come Cure materne, ecc. (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

Negli ultimi anni la sua intima adesione al soggetto e la sua raffinata interpretazione si attenuarono. | © Treccani