Pieter de Hooch

Pieter de Hooch was a Dutch painter from Rotterdam who worked in Delft in the 1650s, alongside Vermeer, before moving to Amsterdam. He is best known for calm scenes of domestic life in courtyards and interiors, often with an open doorway leading the eye through to a further room or street beyond. His Delft pictures, with their clear daylight and careful perspective, are his finest. The National Gallery in London holds The Courtyard of a House in Delft and several other works, and there are paintings by him in the Wallace Collection and the Royal Collection. He was last recorded in 1679 and the date of his death is not known for certain.