Lot 35: A lady nursing a child in an interior

Pieter de Hooch (Rotterdam 1629-1684 Amsterdam)
A lady nursing a child in an interior
oil on canvas, shaped
20 3/8 x 23 7/8 in (51.8 x 60.7 cm.)

Amsterdam, F. Muller & Co., Exposition de maîtres hollandais du XVIIe siècle, 10 July-15 September 1906, no. 66.
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, Tentoonstelling van Oude Kunst, 1929, no. 75.
Birmingham, City Museum and Art Gallery, Some Dutch Cabinets of the 17th Century, 26 August-8 October 1950, no. 30.

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., IV, London, 1833, p. 212, no. 23
H. Havard, Pieter de Hooch in L'Art et les artistes hollandais, III, Paris, 1880, p. 94:1.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné, etc., I, London, 1907, pp. 21-2, nos. 19 and 24.
C. Brière-Misme, 'Tableaux inédits ou peu connus de Pieter de Hooch', in Gazette des beaux-arts, 1927, p. 265.
W.R. Valentiner, Pieter de Hooch, Berlin-Leipzig, 1929, p. 282, no. 115, illustrated.
F. van Thienen, Pieter de Hooch, Amsterdam, c. 1945, no. 59, fig. 53.
S. Slive, 'Dutch School', in European Paintings in the Collection of the Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, 1974, pp. 108-9, figs. 108 and 109.
P. Sutton, Pieter de Hooch, Oxford, 1980, pp. 112-13, no. 131, pl. 136.

Hendrik Muilman; (+) sale, Van der Schley, Amsterdam, 12 April 1813, lot 67 (426 florins to Hulswit).
Private collection, Amsterdam, by which offered to the Museum Boymans van Beunigen, Rotterdam, in 1895-6.
Beckeringh collection; sale, J. Camberlyn, Amsterdam, 13 July 1926, lot 725.
with van Diemen, Amsterdam, 1929.
with Eugene Slatter, London, 1946, from whom acquired by
Percy B. Meyer, for 3,476 gns. (with two flower paintings), and by descent.

PROPERTY FROM THE MEYER COLLECTION (LOTS 15, 16, 29 & 35)

Dated by Sutton (op. cit.) to circa 1675-80, this affectionate depiction of a mother and child accords with one of the artist's favourite themes that he painted throughout his career. He may have been influenced in his choice of subject matter by Nicolaes Maes who, in works such as the Young mother and child (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), made a series of innovative paintings in the mid-1650s of women going about their chores and tending to children in domestic interiors. Such is the closeness of this connection between the two artists that Thoré Bürger once even suggested that De Hooch had trained under Maes, although there is no evidence of any contact between the two artists and De Hooch was actually the elder by four years (W. Thoré-Bürger, Musées de la Hollande, I, Amsterdam et la Haye, Paris, 1858, p. 98; cited by P. Sutton, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Pieter de Hooch, 1998-9, p. 31).

As evinced by the present example, De Hooch's depictions of maternal childcare were particularly tender. He was himself a father of seven and understood what it meant to convey a sense of motherly duty being fulfilled in a virtuous way. The serene manner in which the mother cradles her infant beside the crib in this work, readily brings to mind devotional images of the Virgin and Child, and Sutton has remarked in a discussion of works on this theme, that: 'De Hooch's many images of mothers at the side of cradles convey a perfect serenity and repose. His nursing mother becomes a secular madonna lactans as mariolatry becomes mother love' (P. Sutton, ibid., p. 71).

De Hooch sets the scene within an elegant and meticulously ordered room which further reinforces the idea of domestic virtue. The articulation of space is familiar within the artist's oeuvre; in particular in its use of an open doorway leading from the dimly lit interior to the outside. The maid who stands with her back to the viewer between the two areas acts as a spacial device, commonly used by the artist, designed to lead the eye in to the distance. The nature of her contact with the man at the door is deliberately enigmatic. This composition can be compared with several of De Hooch's pictures from the 1670s, the closest of which is the Mother and Child with a Maid holding a Duck (Massachusetts, Worcester Art Museum), with which the present work was once confused by Hofstede de Groot.