Lady with a Guitar
Since 1933, a copy of a painting by Johannes Vermeer known as Lady with a Guitar has sat in storage at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, never having been put on display. For nearly a century, experts believed the work to have been a copy of Vermeer’s original painting, The Guitar Player. The original is now owned by Kenwood House, a mansion and museum in central London. However, one specialist is now claiming that it is the Philadelphia work that is, in fact, an original.
Arie Wallert formally worked at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam as a scientific specialist. He spoke at a symposium last week at the Rijksmuseum, which currently hosts the largest collection of Vermeer works ever assembled for their current exhibition. There Wallert claimed that the painting in Philadelphia is likely an original work by Johannes Vermeer, created based on the same drawing as the Kenwood version. His claim comes from examining pigment samples taken from the canvas, which show lead-tin yellow, which was only used in Europe until around 1700. The painting also contains ultramarine, an incredibly expensive paint common in Vermeer’s work. At the time of the Kenwood version’s discovery in 1927, art historians believed it to be an original Vermeer mainly because of its quality. The Philadelphia version is not in the best shape, with much surface damage to the canvas. Other than the condition, the only other difference between the two is the subject’s hair. In the Kenwood version, the woman’s hair is partially drawn back, with some lively curls coming down the sides of her head. Meanwhile, the subject’s hair is completely tied back in the Philadelphia version.
PMA director Sasha Suda responded by not coming down on either side of the issue but hoping this would “inspire discussion” about the work. With this new hypothesis, it is unclear if the PMA will attempt to restore the painting or consider putting it on display in the galleries. But for a city whose teams lost both the Super Bowl and the World Series in the same year, it might be good to give them something nice.