The Golf Players

The game the two boys are playing is not golf but its ancestor, colf, a Dutch pastime hit with a curved stick across frozen ground and open yards through the cold months. De Hooch dated this in 1658, at the height of his gift for what the Dutch called a doorkijkje, a view through. Your eye is led from the shadowed near room out through a doorway into a sunlit yard and on again to a further wall, each space held in a cool, even winter light. The older boy has stopped mid-swing because a small child has just burst through the door behind him.