The Lacemaker

c. 1925

Painted almost entirely in tones of golden, mustard, and pale yellows, a young woman is shown from the lap up having turned to face us while making lace on a wooden frame in this vertical portrait painting. Her body faces our left almost in profile, but she turns her face to look at us with large, hazel-gray eyes. Her skin has a yellow cast but her smooth cheeks are lightly flushed, and her coral-red lips are parted. Her cinnamon-brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back under a slate-blue ribbon, and she wears a teardrop-shaped earring in the ear we can see. Her burnt-orange shirt has pale yellow, wide cuffs at the elbow-length sleeves and a wide collar that rests across her chest and shoulders. The cuffs and collar are textured, suggesting fur. She rests her bare forearms against the wood frame in front of her, to our left, which is about the height of a table. A parchment-yellow cloth is draped over the frame, and she holds two short, cylindrical bobbins in her hands. Two more thread-wrapped bobbins hang to one side. The woman’s tea-brown skirt is partially hidden by a table situated closer to us, in the lower right corner of the painting. The table is covered with a patterned rug in maroon red, black, and gold. On the table are a low, wide pewter-gray bowl and a dark indigo-blue pillow with gold tassels and gold stripes near the seams. The wall behind the woman is honey yellow.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Andrew W. Mellon Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 44.5 x 40 cm (17 1/2 x 15 3/4 in.)
    framed: 67.3 x 61.9 x 9.5 cm (26 1/2 x 24 3/8 x 3 3/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1937.1.54

More About this Artwork

Shown from about the knees up, a pale, smooth-skinned woman in a fur-lined yellow jacket looks out at us as she sits writing at a table in this vertical painting. The woman’s body faces the table to our left. She turns her head to gaze at us from the corners of her dark gray eyes under faint brows. She has a wide nose, and her pale lips are closed. Her light brown hair is pulled back and held in place with white bows, and gleaming teardrop-shaped pearl earrings dangle from her ears. Her lemon-yellow jacket is trimmed with ermine fur, which is white with black speckles, at the cuffs and down the front opening. A full, elephant-gray skirt falls to the floor beneath the jacket. Both hands rest on the table, and she holds a quill in her right hand, farther from us, on a piece of paper. She leans forward in her wooden chair. The back panel of the chair is covered in black fabric and lined with brass studs. Two gilded finials, carved into lions’ heads, face the woman’s back with mouths open. The table is covered with a celestial-blue cloth crumpled near the left edge of the canvas. On the table are a strand of pearls, a pale yellow ribbon, and a black box with three brown panels studded with pearls around silver keyholes. Two pewter gray vessels are visible just beyond it, in front of a second chair, which faces us. On the putty-gray wall behind the woman, a framed painting hangs in the upper left quadrant of the composition. The painting-within-the painting is done in muted tones of brown and shows a cello and other unidentifiable objects.

Interactive Article:  Reconsidering Vermeer’s Perfectionism

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Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Captain Harold R. Wright, London and Bremen, Germany;[1] sold August 1927 to (Duveen Brothers, Inc., London, New York, and Paris); sold November 1927 to Andrew W. Mellon [1855-1937], Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.;[2] deeded 30 March 1932 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA.
[1] Wright’s connection to the painting is discussed by Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. ("The Story of Two Vermeer Forgeries." In Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on His Seventy-fifth Birthday. Cambridge, Mass., 1995: 271, 273-275), and explored in depth by Jonathan Lopez in his book (The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren, New York, 2008: 3-5, 22-86, 101-111, 261 n., 262 n., 265 n., 267 n., 268 n.), his article (“The Early Vermeers of Han van Meegeren,” Apollo (July-August 2008): 22-29), and his e-mail of 7 November 2015 to Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., copy in NGA curatorial files.
[2] Duveen Brothers Records, accession number 960015, Getty Research Institute, Research Library, Los Angeles: reel 155, box 300, folder 3; copies in NGA curatorial files. According to Edward Grasman, "Vitale Bloch: the early years," RKD Bulletin 2010/2: 5, Bloch was also involved in this sale on behalf of the Rothmann gallery in Berlin.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1927

  • Kaiser-Friedrich Museum, Berlin, 1927 (information from Knoedler prospectus).

Bibliography

1927

  • Ricci, Seymour de. "Le quarante-et-unième Vermeer." Gazette des Beaux-Arts 69 (1927): 306.

  • Martin, William. "Der neuaufgefundene Jan Vermeer van Delft". Kunstwanderer (1927-1928): 6-7, repro.

1928

  • Valentiner, Wilhelm R. "A Newly-Discovered Vermeer." Art in America (April 1928): 101-107, repro.

1929

  • Hofstede de Groot, C. Jan Vermeer de Delft, and Carel Fabritius. 1929: repro.

  • Singleton, Esther. Old World Masters in New World Collections. New York, 1929: 228-232, repro.

1935

  • Tietze, Hans. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935: 188, repro. (English ed., Masterpieces of European Painting in America. New York, 1939: 188, repro.).

1937

  • "The Mellon Collection. A National Art Gallery for America." The Connoisseur (March 1937): 141.

  • Hale, Philip Leslie. Vermeer. Edited by Frederick W. Coburn and Ralph T. Hale. Boston, 1937: 135-136, repro.

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. "A Portfolio of the Andrew W. Mellon Collection." Art News 35 (1 May 1937): no. 6, repro.

1940

  • Goldscheider, Ludwig. The Paintings of Jan Vermeer. Oxford and New York, 1940: 14, pl. 38.

1941

  • Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 215, repro., as by Jan Vermeer.

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 208-209, no. 54, pl. XIV, as by Jan Vermeer.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 240, repro. 34, as by Jan Vermeer.

1945

  • Vries, Ary Bob de. Jan Vermeer van Delft. Basel, 1945: 118, no. 31.

1948

  • Vries, Ary Bob de. Jan Vermeer van Delft. Translated by Robert Allen. Revised ed. London and New York, 1948: 98, pl. 38.

1949

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 93, repro., as by Jan Vermeer.

1950

  • Swillens, P. T. A. Johannes Vermeer: Painter of Delft, 1632–1675. Translated by C.M. Breuning-Williamson. Utrecht, 1950: 66, no. J.

1958

  • Goldscheider, Ludwig. Jan Vermeer: The Paintings. London, 1958: 144, no. 5.

1965

  • National Gallery of Art. Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. Washington, 1965: 135, as by Vermeer.

1968

  • Bianconi, Piero. Tout l'oeuvre peint de Vermeer. Paris, 1968: 91, no. 22.

  • European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 122, repro., as by Vermeer.

1970

  • Richard, Paul. "The Mystery of the Two Vermeers." The Washington Post (February 12, 1970): B1, B12.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 362, repro., as Follower of Jan Vermeer.

1991

  • Kopper, Philip. America's National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation. New York, 1991: 68.

1995

  • Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. "The Story of Two Vermeer Forgeries." In Shop Talk: Studies in Honor of Seymour Slive, Presented on His Seventy-fifth Birthday. Cambridge, Mass., 1995: 271-275, 427-428 figs. 3-5, as by Imitator of Johannes Vermeer (probably Theodorus van Wijngaarden).

2001

  • Franits, Wayne E., ed. The Cambridge companion to Vermeer. Cambridge, England, and New York, 2001: 173-176, fig. 61, as by Theodorus van Wijngaarden.

2008

  • Fenton, Roger. "Victims of Vermeermania." The New York Review of Books 55, no. 17 (November 6, 2008): 58.

  • Lopez, Jonathan. The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren. New York, 2008: 5, 6, 22-24, 53-54, 59, 61, 69-71, 75, 85-86, 101, 103, 139-140, 237-240, repro., as by Han van Meegeren.

  • Dolnick, Edward. The Forger’s Spell: A True Story of Vermeer, Nazis, and the Greatest Art Hoax of the Twentieth Century. New York, 2008: 105-108, 109-111, 118, 119, 306, color plate, as by Theo van Wijngaarden.

  • Lopez, Jonathan. "Van Meegeren's Early Vermeers." Apollo (July-August 2008): 22-29, fig. 1, as by Han van Meegeren.

2009

  • Lopez, Jonathan. "Forger's Justice." Letter to the Editor. The New York Review of Books 56, no. 4 (March 12, 2009): 46.

2013

  • Harris, Neil. Capital Culture: J. Carter Brown, the National Gallery of Art, and the Reinvention of the Museum Experience. Chicago and London, 2013: 221.

2022

  • Gifford, E. Melanie, Kathryn A. Dooley, and John K. Delaney. "Methodology & Resources: New Findings from the National Gallery of Art." Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art. 14, no. 2 (Summer 2022): fig. 23.

Wikidata ID

Q20192556

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