Four elegantly dressed men and women, plus a brown and white dog, gather around a rug-covered table in a shadowy room in this vertical painting. The people all have pale skin and are lit from our left. The women have blond hair and wear long silk dresses, and the men have shoulder-length wavy hair. At the center of the painting and closest to us, a woman stands with her back mostly to us, her body angled away to our right. Her face is in shadow, but we see the tip of a delicate nose. Her hair is pulled to the back of her head, and a few touches of white paint suggest a ribbon or ornament…

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The Greeting

painter Pieter de Hooch (Dutch, 1629 - 1684)

c. 1675

Medium: oil on canvas
Classification: Painting
Dimensions: overall: 86.2 × 70.33 cm (33 15/16 × 27 11/16 in.) ; framed: 111.13 × 95.57 × 9.53 cm (43 3/4 × 37 5/8 × 3 3/4 in.)
Culture: Dutch
Museum: National Gallery of Art, CNE-B
Credit line: Corcoran Collection (William A. Clark Collection, 1926)
Rights: Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

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