Piano Practice Interrupted

Van der Kooi painted this canvas in 1813, the year French rule in the Netherlands came apart. Since 1810 the country had been part of Napoleon's empire. In November 1813, after Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig, French troops began to pull out, and at the end of the month the Prince of Orange landed at Scheveningen, back from exile. By 1815 he was King Willem I, which is why the picture hangs in the Rijksmuseum's gallery about Waterloo and the new king.

Nothing in the painted room mentions any of it. The girl wears the high-waisted pale blue gown that Paris had made fashionable, with a gold chain at her neck and a comb in her hair. She has turned from the keyboard, the music still open, towards two boys, and the smaller one has put his foot on the rail of her chair.