Leisure Time in an Elegant Setting

Amsterdam in the 1660s was at the height of its money, and its merchants wanted pictures of the polished life that money bought. De Hooch obliged. Here he opens up a grand chamber with a marble floor and walls of gilded, tooled leather, lit softly from a window on the left. In front, a small merry group talks and drinks. But look past them, deeper into the house, and a second, stranger meeting is going on, a young man and a bearded old figure caught together in the shadowed vestibule, their business unclear. De Hooch loved building rooms you could walk into, one space giving onto the next, each with its own light. The real subject is that receding architecture. The people are almost furniture arranged inside it.