Artist of the week
Sunlight, tiled floors and open doors
Pieter de Hooch
Pieter de Hooch, a Dutch painter of rooms and the people in them, from the late 1650s to about 1670. A woman in a fur-trimmed red jacket raises a glass under a green arbour, sunlight turns a wall yellow behind a card game, and by an open window a young woman touches her hair. A gentleman in a red coat pays the hostess beside a big cart wheel, a woman carries a pitcher on a tray across a chequered floor, and the walls of one room are patterned in gold.
As a puzzle
Start with the people and the light: the red jackets, the white caps and aprons, the yellow patch of sun behind the card players. Then the floors, chequered or tiled, which give you straight lines to follow. The dark beams, the corners and the shadowed back rooms are slow, and the gold-patterned walls repeat one design from edge to edge. Paying the Hostess is the darkest; keep the count moderate.
A good size here: 40–200 pieces.
Also filed under Dutch Golden Age
Subjects here: InteriorsEveryday Life
7 pictures, pick one to build
Leisure Time in an Elegant Setting ca. 1663–65 
Paying the Hostess ca. 1670 
A Couple Playing Cards, with a Serving Woman ca. 1665–75 
Interior with a Young Couple probably ca. 1662–65 
A Woman and Two Men in an Arbor ca. 1657–58 
The Visit ca. 1657 
Woman with a Water Pitcher, and a Man by a Bed ca. 1667–70