Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, 1908.djvu/495

SECTION IV PIETER DE HOOCH IT has been definitely ascertained, by the researches of P. Haverkorn van Rijsewijk (Oud Holland^ x. 172), that Pieter de Hooch was born at Rotterdam in December 1629. The old theory that, as a son of the painter Karel de Hooch, he was born at Utrecht, is wrong. According to Houbraken, he was a fellow-pupil of Ochtervelt under Nicolaes Berchem. This is not impossible, but is not proved ; no other evidence for it but Houbraken's bare statement can be adduced, and there is not the least similarity of style between the supposed master and his pupils. Pieter de Hooch's earliest works in their details evoke reminiscences on the one hand of the painters of Delft and Leyden, such as Carel Fabritius (the "Young Soldier" in the Corsini Palace, Rome), Brekelenkam (the pictures at St. Petersburg and in the Michel collection at Mainz), Dou (the "Young Woman and Cavaliers at Wine" in the collection of Dr. Hofstede de Groot), and Van den Poel (the " Explosion at Delft ") ; and on the other hand they are related to the pictures of guardrooms of the Duck and Codde group (as in the Borghese Gallery, the Dublin National Gallery, and the Fleischmann collection). All these youthful pictures, dating from the years 1653-57, show in their treatment a distinctive character, both in the choice of types, in the warm colouring, and in the love for sunlight falling directly on the figures. De Hooch was, at the time when these pictures were painted, an attendant in the service of a distinguished man named Justus de la Grange, and lived by turns at Delft, Leyden, and The Hague. From 1654 he was a member of the Guild of St. Luke at Delft ; and he had married a wife m that town a year earlier. In the town archives he can be traced as living at Delft till 1657 ; his works enable us to extend his residence there, for up till 1665 De Hooch's pictures show by preference views of Delft, which can be recognised by the towers of the Delft churches. At this period Johannes Vermeer was also working at Delft. There can be no doubt that the two artists were acquainted with each other. Vermeer was three years younger than De Hooch ; his only dated work un- questionably one of his earliest pictures belongs to the year 1656. Vermeer was a pupil of Carel Fabritius, who was killed in the explo-