Una mujer bebiendo con dos hombres

De Hooch painted this in Delft around 1658, in the same small town and the same years that Vermeer was working a few streets away, both men obsessed with sunlight crossing a tiled floor. Look at those black and white tiles: their converging lines are how de Hooch builds a room you believe in, setting each figure at its exact distance. There is a quieter story under the paint. Infrared images show he first put a fourth figure here, a man leaning close to the serving woman with the coals, probably flirting with her. He painted him out. Whether he added the maid afterward or simply removed the man, the effect was to cool the scene down, turning a hint of loose company into something more respectable for a buyer's wall.