Woman plucking a duck

By the time Pieter de Hooch painted this in 1675, the sunlit Delft courtyards that had made his name were well behind him. He was living in Amsterdam now, and his work had turned quieter and darker, toward interiors like this one. The subject could hardly be plainer: a woman sitting with a duck across her lap, pulling out the feathers by hand, the loose down catching what little light there is. This was ordinary household work in a Dutch home, the unglamorous step between the market and the table. De Hooch gives it the same patient attention he once gave to bright brick and open doorways. He kept painting these domestic moments in Amsterdam until his death in 1684.