An Afternoon In Delft

01 Feb An Afternoon In Delft

Posted at 21:23h in Less than an hour from Rotterdam, STOCK PHOTOGRAPHY, Travel Stories by micheile henderson 0 Comments

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Delft, The Netherlands

Pieter de Hooch

Today we took the 10 minute train ride from Rotterdam to Delft. Delft is one of the more charming cities in The Netherlands. Crooked houses, historical buildings, canals and museums. Today we went to view the Pieter de Hooch exhibition showing at the Prinsenhof Museum located within a ten minute walk of the train station.

Rotterdampas? The museum is free, the exhibit from Pieter de Hooch requires a €5,- payment and you’ll need to reserve a time-slot ahead of your visit. It was quite busy!

The exhibition

About the exhibition 11 October 2019 to 16 February 2020

The first retrospective exhibition in the Netherlands of the famous 17th-century painter Pieter de Hooch will be presented at the Museum Prinsenhof Delft from 11 October 2019 to 16 February 2020. The exhibition, Pieter de Hooch in Delft: From the shadow of Vermeer is the first retrospective of the artist’s work in his own country.

Some of his work...

...more from Pieter de Hooch.

After Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch is widely considered to be the most celebrated Delft master of the 17th century. The paintings De Hooch produced in Delft (ca. 1652-1660) will be at the heart of the exhibition: his most beautiful courtyards and interiors will return to the city where they were painted almost 400 years ago.

29 works will be coming to Delft on loan from leading museums in Europe and the United States. These include many famous paintings never before exhibited in the Netherlands such as the well-known Courtyard of a House in Delft from the National Gallery, London.

Other Pieter de Hooch masterpieces will come from Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, the Kunsthaus Zürich and the National Gallery of Art in Washington. An extraordinary work on loan from the Royal Collection of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II is the masterpiece Cardplayers in a Sunlit Room. In addition, the exhibition will comprise works on loan from the Mauritshuis, the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, the Amsterdam Museum and of course the Rijksmuseum, which holds one of the largest collections of De Hoochs in the world.

His work, both in style and subject matter, shows some affinity with that of Johannes Vermeer, who was living in Delft at the same time. Though he sometimes painted open-air scenes he more typically painted two or three figures occupied with humble daily duties in a sober interior, the still atmosphere of which is broken only by the radiant entry of outdoor light illuminating the scene. These depictions of the serene simplicity of Dutch domestic life are free of sentimentality. As an aspiring photographer I couldn’t but help think of Lifestyle Photography. I love the lighting, and how his paintings draw your eye through a window, door or port.

A walk through Delft

If you have more time, check out the tourist office in Delft or browse Pinterest for some tips on where to go. We haven’t spent enough time in the city as of yet, so I can only recommend a few places. Kek is really cozy and I like the pancakes.

While we were walking a took some photos and uploaded them to Unsplash where you can view and download them for free.