De Hooch moved from Delft to Amsterdam in 1660 and his painting correspondingly went up-market, a difference which might be summarised (misquoting the Emperor Augustus) by saying that it changed from brick to marble. The same change took place in the work of de Hooch’s associate in Delft, Johannes Vermeer, and can be seen in his Music Lesson of c.1665 in the Royal Collection. Both artists realised that a tiled floor (or indeed a plaster wall) is not a perspectival diagram but a precious surface, reflecting light with a lustre comparable to Ter Borch’s silks (which incidentally are consciously emulated here by De Hooch’s dresses). De Hooch and Vermeer also decided that a scene is more effective if it appears glimpsed rather than stage-managed: this composition is lop-sided and asymmetrical, with figures apparently unaware of the viewer’s presence, even turning their backs. Our experience of the world, as opposed to a stage, is partial: in De Hooch’s interior we see the street bathed in brilliant sunshine which narrows our pupils so that we can just make out the cloth backing of the wall as a shadowy veil.

This scene is almost certainly imaginary, but is directly comparable in its sumptuous definition of space and surface to de Hooch’s portrait groups of the same time, such as his Family Playing Music of 1663 (The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio). However, the music-making in this painting is probably not symbolic of family harmony, but rather of courtship.

Signed and dated: 'P. D. Hooch 1667'