Last Vermeer to Remain in Private Hands: A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal

If you haven't been able to view The Girl With A Pearl Earring in San Francisco, Atlanta or New York City, take a trip to Philadelphia for another young woman Vermeer painted.

A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, one of less than forty surviving paintings by the great Dutch master Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), is now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As he did throughout his career, Vermeer took his inspiration for this intimately scaled oil painting from contemporary life. Focusing attention on a single, well-dressed woman at a virginal — a keyboard instrument akin to a harpsichord — Vermeer achieved crystalline perfection. He stripped the scene of almost all other details so that the viewer can focus on the unidentified woman, the light that pours into the interior, and the forms crafted from that light. Installed in gallery 264, the painting is on loan from a private collection, which is also lending the Museum major works by Frans Hals and Gerbrand van den Eeckhout.

A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, 1670-72, Johannes Vermeer, Dutch (active Delft), 1632-1675, Oil on canvas, ©The Leiden Collection, New York

Executed late in Vermeer’s life, A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal is the last work by the artist to remain in private hands, aside from a picture owned by Queen Elizabeth II of England. It is also the most recent to be firmly attributed to the master.* In addition to myriad investigations in the 1990s and after, recent analysis has found that it was painted on canvas cut from the same bolt of cloth that Vermeer used for The Lace Maker, which today hangs in the Louvre.

In addition to A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, the Leiden Collection, New York, is lending Portrait of Samuel Ampzing by Hals (c. 1582-1666), which depicts in bravura brushstrokes a Haarlem minister and writer. It is included in the new installation Painting and Reading in the Dutch Golden Age (gallery 273), where it joins works drawn from the John G. Johnson Collection and the Museum’s collection of Dutch art, the largest in the United States. The Coat of Many Colors, a biblical scene attributed to van den Eeckhout (1621-1674), a pupil of Rembrandt in Amsterdam, is in gallery 258 in proximity to a work by the same artist in the Museum’s collection.

Young Woman Seated at a Virginal will be on view at the Museum through March 2014, while the Hals portrait and The Coat of Many Colors will be on view until October 2014.

Vermeer’s pictures have seldom have been exhibited in Philadelphia. The last time a Vermeer was on display in Philadelphia was in 2004, when Young Woman Seated at a Virginal was on view at the Museum.

Portrait of Samuel Ampzing, 1630, Frans Hals, Dutch (active in Haarlem), c. 1582-1666, Oil on copper, ©The Leiden Collection, New York

* "Through technical research, traces of tin were found in the yellow pigment. Lead-tin yellow was commonly used by artists from the Middle Ages through the 17th century, but was rarely — if ever — used after 1700. A different dating method was used to research the style of clothing and hair worn by the figure in the painting. It was determined that the hairstyle depicted was only fashionable for a few years around 1670, placing the painting in the last years of Vermeer’s career.

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Last Vermeer to Remain in Private Hands: A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal

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