Two Soldiers and a Serving Woman with a Trumpeter

This is Pieter de Hooch before the paintings that made his name. In the early 1650s, still a young man, he painted soldiers, taverns and stables in the popular Dutch line of barrack-room scenes. Here two off-duty officers rest in a stable while a serving woman brings them a jug of wine and a trumpeter stands blowing at the door. Through the opening behind them a horse waits and another figure lingers. Within a few years de Hooch would move to Delft and turn to the sunlit courtyards and quiet households he is remembered for, and soldiers like these would vanish from his painting.