Pieter de Hooch and the Classicizing Phenomenon in Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting

• In Event: Netherlandish Art and Culture at Home and Abroad

Abstract

Scholars often attribute artistic patterns in the Dutch Republic to the booming 17th-century art market. However, at the end of the century, the economy was weakening due to the Franco-Dutch War (1672–78). Artists struggled to succeed in an oversaturated art market and began considering an alternative patronage model promoted by Louis XIV and the French state, which aggrandized artists. Pieter de Hooch challenged his audience to engage with the value and function of paintings by portraying history pictures, commissioned for the Amsterdam Town Hall, with citizens gazing up at them in his late genre scenes. By visually articulating the act of looking, the artist emphasized the physical presence of painting as an art object whose value and purpose was evolving. The use of the Town Hall as a setting reveals de Hooch’s engagement with the civic patronage of history paintings for the structure in contrast with the struggling art market.

Author

• Maggie Finnegan, Boston University