Chapter 3 Domestic Bliss? Images of the Family and Home in Seventeenth-Century Dutch *

John Loughman

3.1 The Growing Interest in Domestic Imagery and Its Background

In this chapter I will discuss seventeenth-century Dutch genre paintings that give pride of place to the family and the home. I will begin by accounting for the popularity of this type of virtuous domestic scene, which became fashion- able after the mid-century. Then I will explain why these images cannot be regarded as faithful visual records of the actual appearance of seventeenth- century residences and the activities that took place within them. Finally, I will offer some explanations as to why artists manipulated reality in this way. The paintings that I will be discussing became known as genre representa- tions in the eighteenth century, but are perhaps more accurately termed scenes of everyday life.1 I have also included a few portraits because they are set in the home and also because the divisions between genre art and portrai- ture were not as sharply drawn in the seventeenth century as they were later to become. One of the defining characteristics of Dutch genre art in the 1650s was a marked increase in images which feature family life, especially the tender rela- tionship between mothers and children, the lively interaction between ser- vants and their mistresses (Fig. 3.1), and the general industrious nature of women in the home (Fig. 3.2). Clearly a market had emerged for domestic themes and artists from the town of , such as and , as well as , who worked in , the painter Gerard Dou, and many others produced works that catered to this new demand. This is a painting by De Hooch, which has become known as A Mother’s Duty (Fig. 3.3), and depicts a mother delousing her young daughter’s

* This essay was originally presented as a lecture at the symposium held at the Japan Art History Society’s 62nd Annual Congress, “Representation of Intimacy in Art,” May 23, 2009 at Kyoto University. 1 For the etymology of the art-historical term “genre” and its application to painting, see Stechow and Comer 1975–1976.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi 10.1163/9789004261945_004

84 Loughman

Figure 3.1 Johannes Vermeer, The Love Letter, ca. 1668–1669, , .

Figure 3.2 Johannes Vermeer, The Milk Maid, ca. 1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Figure 3.3 Pieter de Hooch, A Mother’s Duty, ca. 1658–1660, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.