In the hush of early morning, a dutiful mother butters bread for her young son, who patiently stands at her side. This splendid painting captures a trivial moment in a family's daily routine and makes it almost sacrosanct. A Woman Preparing Bread and Butter for a Boy was executed by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch (1629-1684) between 1661 and 1663. The J. Paul Getty Museum's canvas is one of the artist's many pictures depicting women and children engaged in daily activities. This book examines the painting in relation to the artist's life and work, exploring his stylistic development and his complex relationship to other painters in the Dutch Republic. The author places the subject matter of the painting within the broader context of seventeenth-century Dutch concepts of domesticity and child rearing and ties it to social and cultural developments in the Netherlands during the second half of the seventeenth century.

* After Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch is widely considered to be the most celebrated Delft master of the 17th century. This book accompanies the first retrospective exhibition in the Netherlands at the Museum Prinsenhof, Delft from 11 October 2019 to 16 February 2020This stunning catalogue accompanies a retrospective exhibition in the Netherlands of the famous 17th-century painter Pieter de Hooch (1629- after 1684). 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, and will be presented at the Museum Prinsenhof Delft from 11 October 2019 to 16 February 2020. 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. Approximately 30 works will be coming to Delft on loan from leading museums in Europe and the United States and includes many famous paintings.

"How refreshing, how absolutely refreshing, to find a book on Dutch painting that asks readers to begin by simply looking. Hollander is faithful to the possibility--so common in painting, so unusual in scholarship--that the paintings are elusive, evasive, unsystematically ambiguous. Doors ajar, windows onto the street, paintings within paintings, half-drawn curtains, blank mirrors, a man's coat hung on a nail: those are the engines of interpretation, and Hollander tells their history lucidly and entirely persuasively."—James Elkins, author of The Object Stares Back "Hollander offers fresh and compelling readings of key works by Karel van Mander, Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, and Pieter de Hooch. Very few recent books on Dutch art are as rich as this; and few are written in such lucid, unpretentious prose. What shines forth from every page is a genuine love of the pictures. Here is art history well tempered to the objects it interprets."—Joseph L. Koerner, author of The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art "In recent years, scholars have explored how space signifies in seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture; Hollander's fascinating study is the most comprehensive to date. It examines space--as conceived in the writings of Dutch art theorists, constructed in contemporary architecture, and disposed and made meaningful in the work of Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, Pieter de Hooch, and Karel van Mander. An Entrance for the Eyes lays a firm foundation for research on this intriguing and hitherto understudied aspect of Dutch art."—Wayne E. Franits, author of Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art