An interior with two gentlemen and a woman beside a fire

Peter de Hooch was one of the most accomplished painters of domestic genre scenes in the Dutch Golden Age. Few artists rivalled his subtle response to the expressive effects of light or the success with which he defined complex spatial arrangements, often with views through a doorway or window. Among de Hooch’s most innovative contributions to depictions of domestic subjects was his celebration of domesticity and the manifold contributions of women – performing household chores, tending to children or supervising maidservants – which gave visual expression to the centrality of the home in Dutch society. These images stood in stark contrast to his early work, which included a number of guardroom or inn scenes in which well-heeled officers engage amorously with attractive young women.

Peter C. Sutton has described this painting as a late work, datable to circa 1675-80 and executed while the artist was resident in Amsterdam; however, it returns to themes the artist predominantly explored earlier in his career (loc. cit.). Two men and a woman gather around a gameboard atop a draped table beside a fireplace. The room is illuminated by the small fire and a pair of candles, a rare instance of a nocturnal scene in de Hooch’s work. A seated man, besotted with drink, stares blankly at the young woman, his glance matched by the small dog – a standard symbol of fidelity – who directs her own gaze away from the group. The striking dress of the standing man silhouetted against the illuminated rear wall marks him as a cavalier, a notoriously lecherous type in Dutch genre paintings. For her part, the woman quite literally stokes the fire, a detail which removes any doubt about the painting’s amorous undertones.

The man who modeled the mustachioed soldier seated at the far side of the table appears in at least two other paintings by de Hooch, including the Serving Woman and an Officer, with Card Players of similar date (Saltram, Devon, National Trust) and his Paying the Hostess of a few years earlier (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).