A Musical Party in a Courtyard

In 1672, the year the Dutch still call the Disaster Year, French armies invaded the Republic, and the Dutch market for paintings never regained its old strength. Pieter de Hooch kept working in Amsterdam through that slump, and he signed and dated this canvas in 1677. Look through the arch at the back. Across a canal stand brick houses in the Amsterdam manner, and the National Gallery points out that one carries a date tablet of 1620, so the building was already old when he painted it. The courtyard itself gets little attention. The light goes to the people at the table, a woman in a red skirt with pearls at her neck and ears, a man leaning towards her, and a hooded woman holding a bowed instrument upright. In the doorway a young man stands with his back to us, facing the canal.