Pieter Defesche, "Neighbors"

This lovely painting is our favorite. Pieter painted this of the lady and her two children who lived next door to him in the village of Ulestraten, near Maastricht. She had asked him to make a portrait of her and the children and he made it on the condition that she let him make the same portrait in is own style. She agreed. Pieter was a professor of art in Maastricht and a charming man with a wild twinkle in his eye. We visited him and his wife, Dolly, in their home and they also visited my mother and father in Boston. Pieter died in 1998, a much admired and loved Dutch painter.