Exhibitions 1
Pieter de Hooch (Dulwich Picture Gallery, till 15 November)
Poet of light
Andrew Lambirth
Astonishingly, Pieter de Hooch has had to wait more than 300 years for this his first one-man exhibition, though he is wide- ly regarded as one of the great painters of Holland's Golden Age. Born in Rotterdam in 1629, he later moved to Delft, and along with Vermeer became a leading light in the short-lived Delft school. Little is known about his life: for instance, we don't know when de Hooch entered an insane asylum, though we know he died there, evidently in poverty, in 1684. Not a long career, and in terms of the quality of his output, an uneven one. Until now, de Hooch's work has been known mainly from its presence in public collections and from group shows of the period. However, some of the very best of his paintings Irive been gathered together at Dulwich in the first mono- graphic exhibition of his work, and this solid representation of his life's achieve- ment will travel to America later in the year, showing at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, from 17 Decem- ber to 27 February 1999.
The earliest works on display are bar and guardroom scenes, done while de Hooch was learning his trade in Rotterdam, and firmly in the tradition of merry drinking subjects. These pictures are largely unre- markable, dim in colour and romantic in intent. It is only when de Hooch moves out into the sunlight — quite literally — that his paintings find their stride. Gone are the subfusc taverns. His first mature paintings, of sunlit courtyards and flagged floors in prosperous bourgeois interiors, are among the earliest pictures to focus on the new urban environment. They are also some of his most evocative.
The Dulwich show consists of 41 paint- ings, three of which had not yet arrived when I saw the show — two still en route from St Petersburg, and one oddly spooky close-up of children (an unusual choice of subject matter and composition, like a detail of a larger picture) from Polesden Lacey. De Hooch is renowned and best- loved for his scenes of domestic serenity or maternal love. Mothers and children abound, luminous in the play of sunlight shafting in through a nearby door or win- dow. There are no landscapes as such, though the occasional tamed tree intrudes on brick and mortar. The paintings often involve perspectival constructions of much ingenuity and formal precision which underscore the moral content of these images. Remark the regular presence of brooms here: in Dutch culture, sweeping was directly associated with spiritual purity and moral cleansing. Perhaps an aspect of the wide appeal of de Hooch's paintings is this tone of moral homily; but what impresses today's audiences most is the profusion of painted detail, the exact description of texture — whether it's light reflected from a brass chandelier, the stuff of cloak, shawl or bonnet, or the salt- stained dissolution of weathered brickwork.
De Hooch is above all a poet of light who loved brick and stone. Through his understanding and pictorial manipulation of the fall of light, he was able to paint bril- liantly the meeting of indoor and outdoor space, marked generally by a doorway or window-frame. His predisposition for depicting this area of change, this transi- 'A Woman with Children in an Interior' by Pieter de Hooch tion between closed and open space, per- haps reflects the sensitivity of his mental equilibrium. It certainly shows consummate skill. Where de Hooch does not succeed so well is in his depiction of the human figure.
Sometimes even the most balanced de Hooch composition seems like a study of masonry with attendant figures. The bodies might seem convincing enough anatomical- ly, but there is no depth of character to them, no real expression. They are too often arranged as walk-on players in fairly standard domestic episodes. Their place- ment is contrived, and although a single figure might stare out of the picture plane and appear to engage with the viewer, rarely do the players within the painting engender any tension. Psychologically they are flabby. Essentially, de Hooch used peo- ple as props in an attempt to humanise or perhaps dramatise the architecture he loved. The real drama is in the source and movement of light as it caresses and enlivens a wall or a floor.
Around the year 1660, de Hooch trans- ferred his operations to Amsterdam, Northern Europe's primary centre of trade, and succumbed to the lure of loot. He would now paint a dreary picture of a disaf- fected family trying to be civil to one another in a darkly grand interior, sur- rounded and almost stifled by the trappings of wealth. De Hooch became adept at cap- turing the texture and shine of gilded leather wall coverings, in all their vulgarity and ostentation. Nearly always a sunny vista opened out of one corner of these dark interiors, as if in promise of escape. But there is a remarkable lack of spontane- ity in these pictures; or, at the other extreme, of the uncanny stillness of Ver- meer. Even the potentially emotionally charged scenes of a man reading a letter to a woman (or vice versa) seem stagey and unconvincing.
The decision to weight this exhibition towards the mid-period work is sensible: de Hooch's sorry decline, into inability as well as madness, needs only passing men- tion. Look instead at a strange late master- piece, 'A Musical Company in a Courtyard', dating from 1677. Late after- noon light suffuses this broadly painted exterior/interior. De Hooch as usual paints the view through, his genius lying in the depiction of thresholds — in this case a dark archway. There is a strange hot-house animation to the feverish colours of the interior, but the image, elegant to the point of grandiloquence, is nonetheless compelling. It is owned by the National Gallery, as is another masterpiece from nearly 20 years before, 'A Courtyard in Delft with a Woman and Child'. Here all is cool restraint, a tightly and fastidiously constructed painting of multi-layered space. These two paintings represent the poles of de Hooch's achievement: the sub- tlety and the more obvious charms. De Hooch possessed a substantial and intense talent, memorably celebrated here.
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