De Hooch painted this intimate scene of domestic life around 1658 to 1660, during the last years of his Delft period. The painting depicts an everyday occurrence, in which a child opens a door to an inner room, where its mother, busy with her household chores, airs out the bedcovers. The scene, however, is instilled with a sense of intimacy and warmth that transcends the mundane subject matter.
De Hooch achieved this effect through his treatment of light and his sensitive arrangement of the interior space. Light enters the room from two sources: the double windows on the left and the open door and window at the front of the house. As the light streams through the child’s hair, it illuminates the youngster with a palpable, radiant glow. It also enlivens the interior space in the way it plays across a variety of surfaces. De Hooch suggests, for example, the different character of light as it passes through an exterior window, through an interior window, and through both an exterior and interior window. He deftly differentiates between the sheen of reflections off the marble floor and the more spectacular highlights on the orange tile floor. He also captures the nuances of tone in the shadows, which vary because of the multiple light sources.
The extreme naturalism of these optical effects suggests that De Hooch painted this scene, or at least the room, from life. The same room is found in two similar but independent works, A Woman Delousing a Child’s Hair [fig. 1]
[fig. 1] Pieter de Hooch, A Woman Delousing a Child’s Hair, 1658–1660, oil on canvas, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Photo © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and Kolf Players [fig. 2]
[fig. 2] Pieter de Hooch, Kolf Players, 1658–1660, oil on panel, Polesden Lacey, Surrey. Photo: National Trust, both of which were also painted from 1658 to 1660. The landscape seen through the doorway, however, differs in each example.
Another version of this painting, signed with a monogram, is in the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe. The only difference between the two is that the mirror on the wall between the figures has ornaments on its top and bottom in the Karlsruhe version that do not appear here. In 1929 Valentiner wrote that the Washington version is an autograph replica of the Karlsruhe painting. Sutton, though he believes that the Karlsruhe painting is the better of the two works, does not feel that one can designate either as the original version. His 1980 assessment that the Washington painting is “of the highest quality” was borne out in 1982 when the darkened varnish that had obscured many of the painting’s nuances was removed. X-radiographs [see X-radiographyA photographic or digital image analysis method that visually records an object's ability to absorb or transmit x-rays. The differential absorption pattern is useful for examining an object's internal structure as well as for comparing the variation in pigment types.] taken at that time show no significant PentimentiAn alteration made by the artist to an area that was already painted., although the pattern of light falling on the wall from the window on the left has a more defined rectangular shape than that apparent in the final composition. Little is known about the creation of autograph replicas by seventeenth-century Dutch artists. As yet unanswered is whether such works were painted for commission or for the art market.
Bode sought to identify the woman, who reappears in a number of De Hooch’s paintings, as the artist’s wife, Jannetje van der Burch, and the child as one of their own. Most authors are quite circumspect when it comes to naming the gender of the child, for distinguishing between young boys and girls is notoriously difficult given the similarity of their dress at this time. In any event, De Hooch and his wife did have both a son and a daughter, born in 1655 and 1656 respectively, either of whom could have served as the model. Given that the same child appears in the Polesden Lacey painting with a slightly older boy in the background, the child in this painting may well be a depiction of De Hooch’s daughter, Anna. In the Polesden Lacey painting the child carries a kolf stick, used in a popular game at the time, which she has been playing outdoors with the boy. In the Washington painting the child holds a ball, probably a kolf ball. De Hooch has situated the child in a doorway flanked by rows of Dutch tiles depicting children’s games.
As Broos has emphasized, the traditional title of this painting, The Bedroom, is slightly misleading, for it suggests that Dutch homes had rooms with separate functions. To the contrary, box beds, situated against one wall, frequently were part of a multifunction room. Nevertheless, the activities of the woman, who straightens the bed and tends the chamber pot, were part of the morning ritual that Dutch housewives faced as they prepared the central room of the house for its daytime functions. The Dutch prided themselves on orderliness and cleanliness, virtues that were seen as metaphors of spiritual purity.
The harmonious character of the scene and the emphasis on the mother’s dual responsibilities of child nurturing and caring for the home embody an ideal of Dutch domestic felicity that is nowhere better represented than in the paintings of Pieter de Hooch. These ideals, which had by mid-century been well formulated in the writings of Jacob Cats, are also to be found in many of the moralizing messages in the extensive emblematic literature of the day. While reality may not have lived up to the images evoked by De Hooch and Cats, the Dutch concern for orderliness and cleanliness, as well as their sympathetic manner of child rearing, was often remarked upon by foreign travelers.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014
