Bedroom

Around 1660 Pieter de Hooch moved from Delft to Amsterdam, and the Dutch art historian Frans Grijzenhout links this room, with a garden glimpsed through the back door, to the edge-of-town house where he then lived. The composition was popular. Peter Sutton's 1980 catalogue of his work listed three main versions and nine copies, and ranked Karlsruhe's the finest. An exhibition in Delft in 2019 reopened the question. The Washington version rests on a careful perspective construction, and the pinprick marking its vanishing point is still visible. This canvas has no such construction, and its brownish ground suggests a slightly later date. The Karlsruhe museum now writes that whether De Hooch made it himself remains open to discussion. Beside the door, the blue and white tiles that show children's games in Washington are rendered here more simply.