Courtyard of a house in Delft  Pieter de Hooch, 1658 oil on canvas, 74 x 60cm, National Gallery, London.

       This is one of those paintings that when I first saw it it took my breath away.

Christopher Brown, Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford writes: "This is one of the most perfectly judged of all Dutch genre paintings.The infinite subtlety of the composition, its apparent simplicity yet actual complexity, The balance between the foreground figures on the right and the woman standing in the passage on the left, the breathtaking painting of the wall on the right, the tenderness in the glance exchanged between the woman and the child - it is a painting in which it is impossible to imagine any element being different, or in a different place."

Folio gives no credit to the original photographer of the painting.

I shared this as my conversation about art with Charlie the other evening touched on photo realism, and I remembered this painting which had such emotional effect on me. I need to look at more paintings.