HOOCH, Pieter de
(b. 1629, Rotterdam, d. 1684, Amsterdam)

Portrait of a Family in a Courtyard in Delft

c. 1658
Oil on canvas, 113 x 97 cm
Akademie der bildenden Künste, Vienna

This portrait of a prosperous family in a private garden is one of the most distinctive works of the Delft school. In the figures as well as in the setting, the painting is remarkable for its synthesis of naturalism and formality.

In this work De Hooch represented three generations of this unidentified family, who have posed informally in their best clothes as though they had come together spontaneously for a Sunday afternoon visit. The patriarch of the family sits squarely in the foreground, his feet firmly planted on the brick walkway that leads to the open door in the wooden wall separating their courtyard from the next. His wife turns toward him holding in her hand a bunch of grapes she has taken from the fruit bowl, a gesture that contemporary viewers familiar with emblematic imagery of the day would have understood to represent fertility and fecundity. Their daughter sits with them, while behind her stand her husband on the steps and their son. The couple at the left, probably the patriarch's son and his wife, stand before a wall covered with roses, the symbol of love, while she holds a peach, emblematic of love and sincerity. Reinforcing the pictorial message that this is a God-fearing, law-abiding family that appreciates the blessings bestowed on them is the distant presence of the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church), whose distinctive tower is seen rising beyond the orange-tile rooftops.