From 1653, for two years, he served as “painter and footman” to Justus de la Grange, a rich merchant adventurer, with whom he lived both in Haarlem and The Hague. Then he married a girl from Delft and moved to that city, his name appearing among the members of its guild from 1655 to 1657. It was now that he came in touch with Vermeer, whose example helped to bring out all that was best in him. His pictures now became veritable poems of light, wrought with extraordinary conscientiousness and to a high pitch of refinement. He paints the courtyards of city houses, aglow in bright sunshine, cool rooms opening into warmly lighted ones, the vista often terminating in a street or canal. Always the varieties of light are rendered with delightful naturalness and in a way that gives a special charm to every detail which the light illumines. He is not very skilful in the representation of figures, but a master in the art of placing them. They and every object in the scene not only occupy their respective planes with absolute justness, but the position assigned to them has been selected with an unerring eye for decorative effect. Moreover, no artist has been so successful in rendering what visitors to Holland rarely fail to observe--the propriety and cleanliness of the Dutch home, and the sentiment that seems to attach to every object in it and around it. Among the loveliest of these interiors is No. 426 in the Munich Pinakothek; _The Mother_, in the Berlin Gallery; _The Interior_ of the National Gallery; _The Pantry_ and _The Interior_, in the Rijks Museum, and an _Interior_ in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts; while two notable outdoor scenes are the National Gallery’s _A Dutch Courtyard_ and the _Family Group_ of the Berlin Gallery. All these and others that might be cited belong to the period between 1655 and 1665. But the enthusiasm which these arouse is sadly dashed by many examples of his later manner, which are disconnected or restless in composition, hot in color rather than luminous, and heavy in the shadows, while others are marred by excessive hardness of surface and triteness of overwrought detail. The latest date that appears on any of his paintings is 1677, wherefore it is surmised that De Hooch’s death occurred about this time. FRANS VAN MIERIS THE ELDER OF the painters bearing the name Van Mieris the most considerable was Frans van Mieris, surnamed the Elder, to distinguish him from his grandson, Frans van Mieris the Younger. Between them came Willem van Mieris, and the merit of the three as artists corresponds with the order of their succession.