Domestic Interior

This painting depicts a seventeenth-century Dutch domestic scene showing a woman playing a keyboard instrument. It is not certain exactly where or when the Dutch painter Caspar Netscher (1639–1684) was born. There are inconsistencies regarding his birthplace, and there is similar doubt about his birth date. Most of his career was spent in The Hague, where he settled in 1661/2, but he trained in Deventer with Terborch. From his master he took his predilection for depicting costly materials—particularly white satin. He painted genre scenes and some religious and mythological subjects, but from about 1670 he devoted himself almost exclusively to portraits, often for court circles in The Hague. His reputation was such that Charles II invited him to England. His work—elegant, Frenchified, small in scale, and exquisitely finished—influenced Dutch portraiture into the 18th century, his followers including his sons Constantijn (1688–1723) and Theodoor (1661–1732).