A Dutch Courtyard

Pieter de Hooch

National Gallery of Art

A woman stands drinking from a tall glass as two men sit at a table in a courtyard enclosed by wood paneling and brick buildings in this vertical painting. The people all have pale, peachy skin. The men, table, and woman take up the lower left quadrant of the composition. Both men wear broad-brimmed, black hats. The man closer to us, on our side of the table, faces our right in profile and holds a long white, clay pipe to his lips. He wears an ink-black jacket and tan leggings. A white stocking hangs down in a wide cuff from his knee on the leg we can see. A dove-gray cape is draped across his lap and a brown coat with gold-colored buttons is slung over a railing behind his back. Across the table, a bearded man wears a shining armor breastplate over a brown shirt. He looks up at the woman and smiles, holding a blue and white tankard with the lid flipped open in one hand. Another pipe and piece of paper sit on the narrow table between the men. The woman stands to one side of the table, facing our left in profile and the toe of her shoe touching or nearly brushing the black shoe of the man closer to us. Her brown hair is covered by a white cap, and she wears a tan-colored jacket, a long, crimson-red skirt, and an ultramarine-blue apron. Across the courtyard, in the lower right corner of the painting, a young girl also wears a white cap and blue apron but with a slate-gray shirt and laurel-green skirt. She approaches the table. A glowing ember is visible inside the ceramic brown dish she holds in both hands. The slightly uneven floor is paved with long, pale yellow bricks. A building rises to our right, a red shutter opening out from a window on the ground level. The other, closed shutter is painted with triangles of black, white, and gray. A half-wall of red brick across from us surrounds an open door, through which are stairs and a tree trunk. More trees rise above the top of that wall. Horizontal paneling encloses the courtyard to our left, behind the men. A church steeple in the distance is silhouetted against the sky over the paneling. A few wispy white clouds float across the vivid blue sky above.