Interior with Two Women and a Man Drinking and Eating Oysters

Pieter de Hooch

Interior con dos mujeres y un hombre bebiendo y comiendo ostras

Hooch, Pieter Hendricksz de

Rotterdam, 1629 - Amsterdam, 1684

Interior with Two Women and a Man Drinking and Eating Oysters, 1681

© Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza

Signed and dated upper right: ''P Hoogh 1681''
Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection
Location: Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid

Oil on canvas

62,5 x 49,5 cm

CTB.1995.2

Artwork history

  • Vinkeles, sale of the D. van Dijl Collection, lot 70, Amsterdam, November 22nd, 1913 (postponed until January 10th, 1814).

     

  • Reverend H. King.

  • G. Mahon (estate sale).

  • M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1920.

  • Goudstikker, Amsterdam, 1928-1929.

  • Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.

  • Sotheby´s, lot 148, London, November 2nd, 1949.

  • Macgregor Germaine Hochschild, Lausanne.

  • Lucerne auction, lot 2,435, November 20th, 1962.

  • Lempertz, lot 93, Cologne, November 14th, 1964.

  • Christie´s Auctions, New York, lot 94, January 1995.

  • Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection.

1926

Utställning av en Samling Gamla Mälningar, Malmö, Malmö Museum, nº 20, illus.

1930

Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz, Plastik und Gewerbe, Munich, Neue Pinakothek, nº 159.

1999 - 2000

Naturalezas pintadas de Brueghel a Van Gogh. Pintura naturalista en la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, nº 8, p. 54.

2000

De Van Goyen a Constable. Aspectos da tradición do pintoresco na Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Corunna, Museo de Belas Artes da Coruña, nº 19, p. 88.

2001

De Van Dyck a Goya. Maestros Antiguos de la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Castellón, Museo de Bellas Artes, nº 15, p. 72.

  • -Hofstede de Groot, C.: Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts: nach dem Muster von John Smith’s Catalogue raisonné. 1907-28, vol. 1, nº 218.

  • -Brière-Misme, C.: ”Tableaux inédits ou peu connus de Pieter de Hooch’‘. In Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Noviembre 1927, vol. 14, p. 285.

  • -Valentiner, Wilhelm Reinhold: Pieter de Hooch. Des Meisters Gemälde in 180 Abbildungen. Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1930. Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben; vol. 35, nº 161, illus.

  • -Heinemann, Rudolf J.: Stiftung Sammlung Schloss Rohoncz. Lugano-Castagnola, 1937, vol. 1, nº 201.

  • -Sutton, Peter C.: Pieter de Hooch. Complete Edition with a Catalogue Raisonné. New York – Oxford, 1980, nº 159, pp. 40, 118-119, illus. 162.

  • -Christie, Manson & Woods International Inc.: Important Old Masters Paintings. [Auction cat.]. New York, January 11, 1995, p. 148, illus.

  • -Naturalezas pintadas de Brueghel a Van Gogh. Pintura naturalista en la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza [Exhib. Cat. Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid], 1999, n. 8, p. 54.

  • -De Van Goyen a Constable. Aspectos da tradición do pintoresco na Colección Carmen Thyssen- Bornemisza, La Coruña, Museo de Belas Artes da Coruña [Exhib. Cat. Museo de Belas Artes da Coruña], 2000, n. 19, p. 88.

  • -De Van Dyck a Goya. Maestros Antiguos de la Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza, Castellón, Museo de Bellas Artes [Exhib. Cat. Museo de Bellas Artes, Castellón], 2001, n. 15, p. 72.

  • -Colección Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza. Arnaldo, Javier (ed.). 2 vols. Madrid, Fundación Colección Thyssen-Bornemisza, 2004, vol. 1, p. 124, illus. p. 125 [Sheet by Peter C. Sutton].

Expert report

In a luxuriously subdued interior, two ladies seated at a table covered with an oriental carpet share a drink and a platter of oysters with a standing gentleman who prepares one of the delicacies. The woman at the right raises a lid of a pewter jug with one hand and holds a flute glass in the other. An orange on the table offers a brilliant accent of colour. At the back are a covered bed, an upright painting in a black frame, and a closed door beneath a ceiling decorated with dental mouldings.

An example of Pieter de Hooch’s late manner, this painting is typical of the elegant, highly formal genre scenes that he executed at the end of his career in Amsterdam. Only two works by the artists are dated later. During this period his figures became more restrained and angular in their gestures, his tonality became even darker, and he favoured a palette of rich hues-gold, silver and a bright reddish-orange. While some of the last paintings betray dismaying lapses in quality, especially in their draftsmanship, this is one of his most successful late compositions. Since there is no evidence that De Hooch ever prospered from his work, indeed he seems to have lived very modestly throughout his career, this painting like his other elegant subjects is probably a fiction far removed from his personal experience. It is an ideal of privileged leisure calculated to appeal to the wealthy, art-buying public who imitated the French in their manners and style. By 1681 when this painting was executed, the art market had partially recovered from the collapse it suffered when Louis XIV’s troops invaded the Netherlands in 1672, but there is no evidence that De Hooch partook in this recovery. Rather, his final aristocratic parties provide a poignant counterpoint to his own sad end.

The subject of an oyster meal was popular among Dutch genre painters, having been repeatedly treated by, among others, Dirck Hals, Frans van Mieris, Jan Steen, and Jacob Ochtervelt. De Hooch himself addressed the subject earlier in his courtyard scene dated 1677 in the National Gallery, London. Called minnekruyden(love herbs) by the popular Dutch poet, Jacob Cats, oysters have been regarded since Antiquity not only as delicacies but also as aphrodisiacs.

Peter C. Sutton

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