Begin with the room, then the passage, then the farther hall, then
the highway open to the unseen sky above, then the house-front beyond
it, and the hall beyond the lady in the neighbouring doorway; there
are at least four distinct distances in this picture each differently
lighted, and the several effects worked out with scrupulous
painstaking fidelity. It is worth your while, with your own eyes rather
than with many words of mine, to search out on the original all these
beautifully varied gradations. In many of his pictures one part is
lighted from the sunlit street, and another from a closed court.
Sometimes his figures stand in an open courtyard, whilst behind is
a paved passage leading into the house. All his subjects are of the
domestic Dutch life of the seventeenth century, but the arrangement
in rooms, passages, courtyards, and enclosed gardens admitted of much
variation. We never feel that the range of subjects is limited, for
the light transforms each into a scene of that poetic beauty which
it was Peter de Hoogh's great gift to discern, enjoy, and record.
The painting is delicate and finished, meant to be seen from near at
hand.
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