Title of Artwork: “Girl with the red hat”
Artwork by Johannes Vermeer
Year Created 1665
Summary of Girl with the red hat
Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer painted Girl with a Red Hat, a small painting that measures only a few inches in height. Vermeer’s “tronies” (depictions of models clad in fanciful attire) are frequently seen as examples of the artist’s oeuvre, but they are not necessarily portraits of identifiable individuals. Others think it’s a photograph. He didn’t care if Vermeer used family members as models or if he found them elsewhere in Delft. Scholars on both sides of the argument disagree on whether or not it should be attributed to Vermeer because it is painted on a wood panel (recycled) rather than a canvas.
All About Girl with the red hat
Pieter Claesz van Ruijven, Vermeer’s patron, owned the painting, which is thought to date from 1665–1666, and it may have been passed down to Maria de Knuijt, who died in 1681, and her daughter Magdalena van Ruijt, who married Jacob Abrahamsz Dissius. On May 16, 1696, it is believed to have been sold at auction in Amsterdam (probably no. 38, 39 or 40).
For 200 French francs on Dec. 10, 1822, Baron Louis Marie Baptiste Atthalin purchased it at the Hôtel de Bouillon in Paris. His nephew and adopted son Laurent Atthalin, Baron Gaston Laurent-Atthelin, and his wife, Baroness Laurent-Atthelin, were the beneficiaries of his estate. With a price tag of $290.000, it was purchased by Andrew W. Mellon from the New York and London branch of M. Knoedler and Co. in November 1925, and deeded to the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust in Pittsburgh on March 30, 1932. The trust donated it to the NGA in 1937.
A more recent study added to the older H. Kuhn pigment analysis. One layer of vermilion is mixed with a black pigment, and the other layer of madder lake glaze is applied on top. Colors in Vermeer’s painting were created by mixing azurite and yellow ochre, as well as umber (umbra), to create greens and browns.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
