Project 2 Painting Analysis and artist analysis

The Painting

For my design I have decided to focus on this painting called "Woman lacing her bodice beside a cradle " (1661-63) by Pieter de Hooch. I love a few things about this painting. Firstly the potential narrative of the scene is very ambiguous. A mother Tends to her baby in the foreground while lacing her Bodice, beside a partially concealed bed. A dog, on its way to the next room turns for a moment to face the woman.

Through the doorway into the next room, a small child hesitantly yet curiously looks out the open door, one of the few sources letting light into the room. Her back foot is raised, she looks almost ready to go outside, yet somehow mysteriously bound to her mother and the indoors. The focus of the painting moves from the various figures in the foreground to this curious little girl, who to me is the major focus and mystery of the work. There is a certain curiosity about what lies beyond these rooms and outside, and a beauty in the way that the doors interconnect with each other, providing slices or glimpses of the volume and nature of the spaces we cannot fully see.

The rooms appear to have quite high ceilings, and curiously paintings are hung very high up on the walls almost out of eyesight of the inhabitants. The high small windows cast dramatic but controlled light on the scenes. The colours of the walls and furnishings are dark and warm, dramatized by this certain play of light.

My narrative

From this painting I have decided to focus on the possible character of the little girl, and her social interaction with the other figures in the painting, as well as her reaction to her interior space and that which is beyond. I have decided to make her a traveller or tourist, who is embarking on a journey somewhere for the first time, because of her curiosity of what lies beyond the contained interior scene, yet her slight hesitancy to move beyond that world. My sentence is

A waiting Room for a curious first time traveller ready to board their boat

Pieter de Hooch - Some interesting comments

"De Hooch's paintings have complex structures, which create the illusion of real perspective. Rectangular architectural frames and Blocks give the impression of distance, and lead the viewers eye to the main focus of the painting... receding floor tiles also help create this impression of persective" ( "Essential history of Art" Kirsten Bradbury - www.artchive.com/artchive/D/de_hooch.html)

" As well as his mastery of perspective, De Hooch was skilled in the portrayal of natural light falling on a scene. His light is warm- more intense than vermeers and his colour range is richer, with fewer cool tones" ( www.rijkmueseum.nl/aria/aria_artists/ 00017097?lang=en)

"De Hooch sometimes gave his interiors hidden messages" ( www.essentialvermeer.com/...)

"A wonderful device of his was the open door or window that reveals a deep space beyond. De Hooch loves to take the eye down corridors and through doors, often proceeding outdoors, perhaps across a canal to another building with even more windows. Proust in Swanns way refers to the device as a metaphor for emotional journeys "as in these interiors by Pieter de Hooch which are deepened by the narrow frame of a half opened door, in the far distance, of a different colour, velvety with the radiance of some intervening light." (reference needed)