Project 2: Room and Narrative

Pieter de Hooch: Cardplayers in a Sunlit Room

1658

oil on canvas 762 X661cm

Analysis

I was first attracted to the pearly quality of the light in this painting, and the use of the large door and window in creating shadows and light upon the card players. The atmosphere seems to be very light, open and airy but not silent, as we see movement and sound through the group of characters. I find the way that de Hooch portrays the full height of the room exaggerates height and gives a clue to a possible meaning of this painting. Indeed if the painting extended only from the feet to the heads of the characters, it would be a very different painting, as seen below. De Hooch not only frames the scene but gives the viewer a sense of grandness and emptiness. There is a tension between the luminosity of the light and the shadows and darkness. The floors are dirty, a broken pipe and a lost playing card is discarded close to the viewer. There is contrast between grandness and humbleness, earthiness and fragility within this image

My Narrative

My character is the seated woman. She is in the middle of the group, but the most detached, while the body language of the other characters seem concentrated solely on her. Compared to the rest of the room, she seems very small, even to the height of the coat rack. I have deducted that it is early afternoon, and her three sons have come to pay her a visit. Her husband died some years ago, and she is left to tend to a huge, grand house. She is belittled by the house - its vast emptiness and the memories it holds. The space that they are in is a thoroughfare at the back of the house, the scene was spontaneously set up making this otherwise plain space significant.