Private Air New York

www.privateairny.com Private Air | Winter 2021/2022 70 Overlaying the general light on dark structure, De Hooch employed a full range of tone, color and illumination effects, chronicling the many behaviors of light. Vermeer confined his pictorial vocabulary to a fewer elements but refined them carefully. In his later work, Johannes discarded painting the light source entirely and worked with subtleties within an even more limited range of darker tones which then, faded into blackness. Perhaps the difficulties in his life and in Holland in the early 1670s, contributed to this darker vision. We do know by his wife's account that his financial ruin weighed so heavily upon his that, "...as a result and owing to the great burden of his children, having no means of his own, he had lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he had so taken to heart that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day or day and a half had gone from being healthy to being dead." Vermeer died at just 43 years old in 1675. Ironically, De Hooch was also considered to have suffered an untimely tragic end when most historians assumed he had died in an Amsterdam insane asylum in 1684. However, it was later discovered in a document unearthed by Franz Grijzenhout,* that it was in fact kk his son, Pieter, who had perished. After being named as parents during the transfer of their son to that institution Pieter de Hooch and his wife vanished. ere are several canvases dated 1684(and even one 1686, discovered by the author) but where they were painted and the date of the artist's death remains a mystery. e fact that records mention the asylum burying the De Hooch's first born alone is also perplexing.* * Did Pieter and Jannetje move to a far away city, sail to the West Indies…or even go to America? Due to Holland's economic woes in the 1670's, many Dutch left the country to pursue opportunities in new lands. The National Gallery Washington National Gallery, London Metropolitan Museum of Art Frick Museum Metropolitan Museum Nat'l Gallery, London Metropolitan Museum Nat'l Gallery Washington Wallraf Richartz Museum Rijksmuseum Nat'l Gallery, London Rijksmuseum Budapest Museum * New information on Pieter de Hooch and the Amsterdam Lunatic Asylum , Burlington Magazine 2007 **SAA, Gasthuizen ('Hospitals'), inv. no.951, Krankzinnigenboek ('Book of the insane'), 1640–1745: On 22nd March 1684 Pieter Pieterse de Hoogh died and he was buried on behalf of this house in St. Anthony's Cemetery. ART

• Cover