''Girl with a Red Hat'' is a rather small painting, signed by the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

painter

Johannes Vermeer Johannes Vermeer ( , , see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October 1632 – 15 December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately succe ...

. It is seen as one of a number of Vermeer's

tronie A tronie is a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that depicts an exaggerated or characteristic facial expression. These works were not intended as portraits but as studies of expression, type, physiognom ...

s – depictions of models fancifully dressed that were not (as far as is known) intended to be

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...

s of specific, identifiable subjects. Whether Vermeer chose family members as models or found them elsewhere in Delft is irrelevant to the appreciation of his paintings. Its attribution to Vermeer – as it is on a (recycled) wood panel and not on canvas – has been a matter of controversy with scholars on both sides of the argument. However, in recent study carried out by the curators of National Gallery of Art certainty has been established on the authorship of the painting by Vermeer, a conclusion also supported by Dutch experts.

Subject of the portrait

The portrait depicts a very young woman dressed in blue, wearing a collar that appears to be lace and a red hat. Her hair is up and she wears a pair of dangling earrings. She looks at the spectator as if she has just turned her head in the direction of a sound, a voice, that has captured her attention. Her mouth is ajar and her face, slightly pink, receives light from the right, which is unusual in the works of Johannes Vermeer. However, after a study using the latest technology in preparation for a 2022 exhibition, titled Vermeer's Secrets it was ascertained that Vermeer began by painting the portrait of a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat.

Authorship

According to the specialized newspaper

The Art Newspaper ''The Art Newspaper'' is a monthly print publication, with daily updates online, founded in 1990 and based in London and New York City. It covers news of the visual arts as they are affected by international politics and economics, developments ...

, a multidisciplinary team came to the conclusion that the painting was without a doubt a Vermeer, who probably painted no more than 40 or 50 works over a 22-year career, of which only 35 are known.

Provenance

The painting, supposedly executed ca. 1669, may have been among those owned by Vermeer's patron, Pieter Claesz van Ruijven and possibly, through inheritance it may have been passed on to his wife, Maria de Knuijt who died 1681; her daughter, Magdalena van Ruijven; and Magdalena's husband, Jacob Abrahamsz Dissius. It is thought to have been sold at an auction in Amsterdam on May 16, 1696 (probably no. 38, 39 or 40). It was bought at a sale at the Hôtel de Bouillon, in Paris on December 10, 1822 (no. 28.) by Baron

Louis Marie Baptiste Atthalin Louis Marie Baptiste Atthalin, Baron Atthalin (born 22 June 1784 at Colmar, Haut-Rhin - 3 September 1856) was a French Army officer, politician, painter, watercolorist, and lithographer. He died in Colmar on 3 September 1856. Louis-Philippe I sen ...

for 200 French francs. After his death it came to his nephew and adopted son, Laurent Atthalin; by inheritance to Baron Gaston Laurent-Atthelin and by inheritance to his wife, Baroness Laurent-Atthelin. The painting was sold by M. Knoedler & Co., New York and London, in November 1925 to

Andrew W. Mellon Andrew William Mellon (; March 24, 1855 – August 26, 1937), sometimes A. W. Mellon, was an American banker, businessman, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, and politician. From the wealthy Mellon family of Pittsburgh, Pennsylv ...

for $290.000, who deeded it on March 30, 1932 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

(a holding-place for Mellon's pictures while the National Gallery of Art was being established). The trust gave it to the NGA in 1937.

Painting materials

The older pigment analysis by H. Kuhn was supplemented by a more recent investigation. The red hat is painted in two layers: the lower layer consists of

vermilion Vermilion (sometimes vermillion) is a color, color family, and pigment most often made, since antiquity until the 19th century, from the powdered mineral cinnabar (a form of mercury sulfide, which is toxic) and its corresponding color. It i ...

mixed with a black pigment, the upper layer is a

madder lake Alizarin (also known as 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone, Mordant Red 11, C.I. 58000, and Turkey Red) is an organic compound with formula that has been used throughout history as a prominent red dye, principally for dyeing textile fabrics. Historic ...

glaze. Vermeer used a mixture of

azurite Azurite is a soft, deep-blue copper mineral produced by weathering of copper ore deposits. During the early 19th century, it was also known as chessylite, after the type locality at Chessy-les-Mines near Lyon, France. The mineral, a basic carb ...

and

yellow ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced ...

for the green areas and

umber Umber is a natural brown earth pigment that contains iron oxide and manganese oxide. In its natural form, it is called raw umber. When calcined, the color becomes warmer and it becomes known as burnt umber. Its name derives from ''terra d'omb ...

(umbra) for the browns in the wall.

Notes

External links