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Pieter de Hooch - Dutch Interior Painter

De Hooch was born in Rotterdam. His father was a bricklayer and his mother was a midwife. He had five brothers and sisters. Not much is known about his early life and large parts of his career are unrecorded.

It is not known how, or why De Hooch decided to study painting but in the late 1640s he studied art in Haarlem under a local master and was influenced by the genre painters who frequented Frans Hals.

Around 1650 De Hooch went to work for Justus de la Grange, a wealthy Rotterdam cloth merchant who was also an art collector. He was recorded as being a painter and servant in the merchant’s household, but it is believed that this meant he was given room and board in return for his paintings. An inventory of de la Grange’s collection showed that he owned eleven paintings by De Hooch. De la Grange had homes and business dealings in The Hague, Leiden and Delft, and De Hooch accompanied him on his travels.

In Delft, De Hooch came into contact with painters of the Delft School and by 1654 he settled down there. This was his most creative period; he began painting quiet interiors and idyllic depictions of interior domestic life. He was a master of perspective and the portrayal of natural light illuminating interior rooms and courtyards. As was the custom at the time, his paintings sometimes bore hidden messages, readily understood by his contemporaries.

In May 1654 he married Jannetge van der Burch. The couple had seven children. A year later, in 1655, De Hooch joined the painters Guild. He did not have enough money to pay the twelve guilder membership fee and was able to pay only three guilders.

After that, there are no records of De Hooch’s life or career until 1661, when he moved to Amsterdam, where he remained for the rest of his life. It is thought he moved there in order to find wealthy patrons. Indeed, his paintings from that period are portrayals of upper class ladies and gentlemen in their palaces and villas. These paintings are considered to be less successful than his early works. Gone were the charming, delicate interiors of the Delft years. The technique is not as delicate and the color palette is dark and unrefined.

But although he portrayed the wealthy classes, De Hooch lived in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Amsterdam. It is believed that the deterioration in his painting was due to ill health, although little is known about his life at this time.

Eventually De Hooch’s health worsened until he died in an Amsterdam asylum for the insane in 1684. He was fifty five years old. It is not known why he was interned there. After his death, his paintings were overshadowed by Vermeer, who is considered to be a greater master of the interiors genre.

You can find a wide collection of Pieter de Hooch paint by number patterns at the Segmation web site. These patterns may be viewed, painted, and printed using SegPlay™PC a fun, computerized paint-by-numbers program for Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

About the Author

Mark Feldman is President of
SegTech, a company devoted to a wonderful Image Segmentation technology called Segmation.

Segmation - The Art of Pieceful Imaging

Segmation - The Art of Pieceful Imaging

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