The exhibition is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in his own country. After Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch is widely considered to be the most celebrated Delft master of the 17th century. The paintings De Hooch produced in Delft (ca. 1652-1660) will be at the heart of the exhibition: his most beautiful courtyards and interiors will return to the city where they were painted almost 400 years ago.
29 works will be coming to Delft on loan from leading museums in Europe and the United States. These include many famous paintings such as the well-known Courtyard of a House in Delft from the National Gallery, London. Other Pieter de Hooch masterpieces will come from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, the Kunsthaus Zürich and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. An extraordinary work on loan from the Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is the masterpiece Cardplayers in a Sunlit Room. In addition, the exhibition will comprise works on loan from the Mauritshuis, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Amsterdam Museum and of course the Rijksmuseum, which holds one of the largest collections of De Hoochs in the world.
Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684), Cardplayers in a Sunlit Room, 1658
Royal Collection Trust, London
In preparation for the exhibition, a range of research projects has been in progress since 2017: art-historical research, research on materials and techniques, research into topographical aspects of Pieter de Hooch’s work, archival research and research into the history of the appreciation of De Hooch’s work. For the research, the Museum Prinsenhof Delft has worked in close cooperation with the Rijksmuseum, the Delft University of Technology, an archival art historian and an architectural historian. The results of these various lines of research will become visible in the exhibition and will be described in the catalogue accompanying the exposition.
The investigation of materials and techniques being carried out by the Rijksmuseum’s restorers and researchers concerns the six paintings by Pieter de Hooch from their own collection, dated ca. 1650 to 1670. In order to broaden the field of research, paintings from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe and a private collection were also studied. The research promises to provide fascinating new insights into the materials and techniques used by the Dutch master.
See the museum website for more information.
Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684), A Mother Delousing her Child’s Hair, Known as ‘A Mother’s Duty’, ca. 1658-60
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam