Woman and a maid with a pail of fish in a courtyard

Pieter de Hooch painted this in Delft around 1660, during the few years when he made the pictures he is remembered for. He had found his subject in the ordinary Dutch courtyard, brick walls, a paved floor, a doorway opening onto more light beyond. Here a seated woman in a red skirt looks up from a letter while her young maid holds out a wooden pail of fish, just bought or just brought in. Nothing much is happening, which is the point. De Hooch built the whole quiet scene out of daylight falling across brick, tile and cloth, each surface caught with patient attention. Within a few years he left Delft for Amsterdam, and these calm sunlit courtyards gave way to grander, colder rooms.