Pieter de Hooch

Gerrit Willem van Oosten de Bruyn (1727–1797), Haarlem;

His sale, Haarlem, Vinne, 8 April 1800, lot 8;

C.H. Schultz, Frankfurt;

His sale, Amsterdam, de Vries, 10 July 1826, lot 40, for 79 florins to Brondgeest;

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 19 December 1947, lot 83, for 3,400 guineas to Duits;

Mrs R.A. Constantine, by 1949;

Anonymous sale ('The Property of a Family Trust'), London, Christie's, 15 April 1983, lot 15, where acquired by the husband of the late owner;

Thence by descent.

C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné..., vol. I, London 1907, p. 538, no. 226;

P. Sutton, Pieter de Hooch, London 1980, p. 121, no. B1, reproduced pl. 167 (as tentatively accepted).

Compositionally this painting compares to other designs by De Hooch from the mid to late 1660s, such as the Women in front of a fireplace in the National Museum, Gdańsk.¹ Although De Hooch started depicting domestic scenes during his years in Delft in the 1650s, with his move to Amsterdam in the 1660s, the type of interior he chose to depict shifted towards more upper class settings, executed in a darker and richer palette.

We are grateful to Dr Peter Sutton for endorsing the attribution to Pieter de Hooch on the basis of photographs. When compiling his monograph Sutton was only aware of the painting through an old black and white photograph and he has since revised his earlier opinion.

¹ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MNG_Pieter_de_Hooch-1.jpg