Domestic Bliss? Images of the Family and Home in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Art*

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Chapter 3 Domestic Bliss? Images of the Family and Home in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Art* 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 Delft, such as Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer, as well as Nicolaes Maes, who worked in Dordrecht, the Leiden 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 <UN> 84 Loughman Figure 3.1 Johannes Vermeer, The Love Letter, ca. 1668–1669, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 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. <UN>.

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Hooch, Pieter De Also Known As Hoogh, Pieter De Hooghe, Pieter De Dutch, 1629 - 1684
National Gallery of Art NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART ONLINE EDITIONS Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century Hooch, Pieter de Also known as Hoogh, Pieter de Hooghe, Pieter de Dutch, 1629 - 1684 Pieter de Hooch, Self-Portrait of Pieter de Hooch (?), oil on panel, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. SK-A-181 BIOGRAPHY Pieter Hendricksz de Hooch (occasionally spelled de Hoogh) was baptized in the Reformed Church in Rotterdam on December 20, 1629. His father was a master bricklayer and his mother a midwife. His only recorded teacher was the landscape painter Nicolaes Pietersz Berchem (Dutch, 1620 - 1683), with whom he studied in Haarlem along with fellow pupil Jacob Ochtervelt (1634–1682). The exact dates of this apprenticeship are not known. Berchem’s interest in landscape apparently had little effect on De Hooch, whose earliest paintings are almost all barrack-room scenes. De Hooch is first recorded in Delft on August 5, 1652, when he and another painter, Hendrick van der Burch (1627–after 1666), witnessed the signing of a will. The following year he is documented as a painter and dienaar (servant or assistant) to a wealthy merchant named Justus de la Grange, a resident of both Delft and Leiden whose collection contained eleven of the artist’s paintings when it was inventoried in 1655. De Hooch witnessed a baptism in Leiden in 1653, but in 1654, when he married Jannetje van der Burch of Delft, he was living in Rotterdam. He and his wife, who was probably the sister of the painter Hendrick van der Burch, had seven children. De Hooch entered the Delft guild in 1655 and is recorded as having paid dues in 1656 and 1657.
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Pieter De Hooch of De Hoogh. Door P. Iwveizkopv Van
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