526 PIETER DE HOOCH SECT. which some members of a large party are sitting at table ; a gentleman with raised glass proposes a toast. Through a window is seen the grey sky. On the lowest step of the staircase a girl stands by the pillar, listening to the conversation of a gentleman and a girl in the middle of the right half of the picture. In the background on this side an open door looks across a sunny square to a sunlit house, with red walls and bluish-green roof, that stands amidst trees and shrubs. Signed in full ; canvas, 32 inches by 26 inches. The picture appears to have been included in a sale of November 14, 1873 a date which is inscribed on the back, with the letters " Vte. Honnou . . ." The place of sale is unknown. Afterwards in the possession of Professor Lohmeyer, in Gottingen, who, in a private letter of 1893, stated that it was apparently by P. de Hooch. 182. THE LOVE-LETTER. Sm. 28 and Suppl. 10 ; de G. 26. In a handsomely furnished room paved with black and white tiles, a page in a rich costume comes from the street door on the right, and, with a bow, hands a letter to a lady standing to the left. She holds up her satin skirt with her right hand, and carries a small dog under her left arm. Her figure is not well lighted, and is indifferently rendered. Another dog stands beside her. To the left, behind the lady, an open door leads into an adjoining room, in which a chimney-piece with pilasters and a chair are visible. A window, over which hangs a picture of the sacrifice of Isaac, gives another view into the adjoining room, where a woman or girl may be seen at her needlework. In the rich local colour of the picture yellow and red predominate. It is a late work. Signed " P. d. hooch " j canvas, 28 inches by 25! inches. Mentioned by Parthey, 1863 (i. 622). [Compare 221.] Sales. (Possibly) Joh. Caudri, in Amsterdam, September 6, 1809, No. 24 (31 florins, Dupre), measuring 22 inches by 20^ inches ; but com- pare 173. C. L. Reynders, in Brussels, August 6, 1821, No. 44 (L. J. Nieuwenhuys) the seamstress is said to be stroking a big dog. (Probably) L. Lapeyriere, Paris, April 19, 1825 (1800 francs). S. A. Koopman, in Utrecht, April 9, 1847, No. 8 (561 florins, Gruyter). T. Schwellingof Aix-la-Chapelle, in Brussels, April 10, 1850, No. 23. Afterwards in the Hudtwalcker-Wesselhoeft collection, Hamburg. Now in the Hamburg Kunsthalle, 1887 catalogue, No. 78 ; described in the enlarged catalogue of the Hudtwalcker-Wesselhoeft collection, 1889, pp. 45-46. 183. GIRL WITH TWO CAVALIERS (or, Interior of a Dutch House). Sm. 49 j de G. 37. At a table by a broad double window, to the left of a room with wooden rafters and a pavement or black and white tiles, sit two gentlemen. One, at the farther side of the table, faces the spectator ; he wears a hat, and with smiling face holds a pipe in each hand in the attitude of a fiddler. The other, seated before the table in profile to the left, holds his plumed hat on his knee, with his right hand above it. He looks at a girl, with her back to the spectator,
