Art; Literature, Modern -- History and criticism; Music -- History and criticism
In Holland at The Hague there are four Vermeers: The Toilette of
Diana, the Head of a Young Girl, An Allegory of the New Testament,
and the View of Delft. At the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, there are four:
The Milk Girl, The Reader, The Letter, and A Street in Delft. (This
latter is the House in Delft, which sold for seventy-two florins in
1696.) In Great Britain in the Coats collection at Castle Skalmorlie
(Scotland) there is Christ at the House of Martha and Mary. In the
National Gallery, a young woman standing in front of her clavecin. In
the Beit collection, London, a young woman at her clavecin. Collection
Salting, London, The Pianist. Windsor Castle, The Music Lesson. Beit
collection, A Young Woman Writing. In the Joseph collection, A Soldier
and a Laughing Girl. And the Sleeping Servant, formerly of the Kann
collection, Paris, then in London, and later sold to Mr. Altman. In
Germany we find the following: At the Berlin Museum, The Pearl Collar.
The Drop of Wine, in the same museum, Berlin. The Coquette, Brunswick
Museum. The Lady and Her Servant, in the private collection of James
Simon, Berlin. The Merry Company and The Reader in the Dresden
gallery. The Geographer at the Window, in the Staedel Institute,
Frankfort. In France, The Astronomer of the A. de Rothschild
collection at Paris, and the little Lacemaker, in the Louvre Gallery.
In Belgium, there was at Brussels the portrait of a girl, which was
formerly in the Arenberg gallery. When I tried to see it I was told
that it had been sold to some one in Germany. Its type, judging from
the head of a girl at The Hague, is not unlike The Geographer, in the
collection of Viscount Du Bus de Gisegnies, Brussels. A Young Girl,
collection of Jonkheer de Grez, Brussels. This last was discovered by
Doctor Bredius in 1906, and is at the present writing in New York at
the gallery of Mr. Knoedler.
In Austria-Hungary there are two noble Vermeers; one in the private
gallery of Count Czernin, the portrait of the painter, the other in
the Museum of Budapest, the portrait of a woman, the latter as solidly
modelled as any Hals I ever viewed. The Czernin Vermeer is the only
one in Vienna (the other Vermeer in this gallery is by Renesse). It is
a masterpiece. In it he grazes perfection.
The United States is, considering the brevity of the list, well off in
Vermeers. There is at Philadelphia the Mandoliniste of John G. Johnson
(without doubt, as M. Vanzype points out, the Young Woman Playing the
Guitar of the 1696 sale). At Boston Mrs. John Gardner owns The
Concert. At the Metropolitan Museum there is the Woman with the Jug
(Marquand); and the Morgan Letter Writer; H. C. Frick boasts The
Singing Lesson (probably known at the 1696 sale as A Gentleman and
Young Lady Making Music).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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