Woman in Blue Reading a Letter

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Woman Reading a Letter
Dutch: Brieflezende vrouw
Vermeer, Johannes - Woman reading a letter - ca. 1662-1663.jpg
Artist Johannes Vermeer
Year 1663–1664
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 46.6 cm× 39.1 cm(18.3 in× 15.4 in)
Location Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Amsterdam

Woman Reading a Letter (Dutch : Brieflezende vrouw) [1] [2] is a painting by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Part of the collection of the City of Amsterdam as part of the Van der Hoop bequest, it has been in the Rijksmuseum since its inception, and was thus the first Vermeer they acquired. [3]

Dutch language West Germanic language

Dutch(Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by around 23 million people as a first language and 5 million people as a second language, constituting the majority of people in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is the third most widely spoken Germanic language, after its close relatives English and German.

Netherlands Constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Europe

The Netherlands is a country located mainly in Northwestern Europe. The European portion of the Netherlands consists of twelve separate provinces that border Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, with maritime borders in the North Sea with Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom. Together with three island territories in the Caribbean Sea—Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba— it forms a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The official language is Dutch, but a secondary official language in the province of Friesland is West Frisian.

Johannes Vermeer 17th-century Dutch painter

Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime but evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Contents

Composition

The central element of the painting is a woman in blue standing in front of a window (not depicted) reading a letter. [4] The woman appears to be pregnant, although many have argued that the woman's rounded figure is simply a result of the fashions of the day. [5] Although the woman's loose clothing may be suggestive, pregnancy was very rarely depicted in art during this period. [6]

While the contents of the letter are not depicted, the composition of the painting is revealing. The map of the Netherlands on the wall behind the woman has been interpreted as suggesting that the letter she reads was written by a traveling husband. [7] Alternatively, the box of pearls barely visible on the table before the woman might suggest a lover as pearls are sometimes a symbol of vanity. [8] The very action of letter-reading reflects a thematic pattern throughout Vermeer's works, as the quotidian, private moment becomes revealing of the human condition. [9]

The painting is unique among Vermeer's interiors in that no fragment of corner, wall or ceiling can be seen. [10]

See also

Dutch Golden Age painting

Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age, a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.

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<i>A Lady Writing a Letter</i> painting by Johannes Vermeer

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<i>Girl with a Pearl Earring</i> 1665 painting by Johannes Vermeer, in the collection of the Mauritshuis

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<i>The Love Letter</i> (Vermeer) painting by Johannes Vermeer

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<i>Study of a Young Woman</i> painting by Johannes Vermeer

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<i>The Allegory of Faith</i> painting by Johannes Vermeer

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<i>Woman with a Lute</i> 1660s painting of Johannes Vermeer

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<i>Woman Holding a Balance</i> painting by Johannes Vermeer

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<i>Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window</i> painting by Johannes Vermeer

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Jacob Abrahamsz. Dissius was a Dutch typographer and printer. He is most notable as an art collector and for his links to Johannes Vermeer - his collection included 21 Vermeer works and in 1680 he married Madgdalene, daughter and sole heir of Vermeer's main patron Pieter van Ruijven. Dissius died in 1695 and his collection was auctioned off in Amsterdam the following year.

<i>Woman with a Pearl Necklace</i> painting by Johannes Vermeer

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<i>Girl with a Flute</i> painting attributed to Johannes Vermeer

Girl with a Flute is a small painting attributed to the Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, executed 1665–1670. The work is in possession of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., just as Woman Holding a Balance, A Lady Writing a Letter and Girl with a Red Hat.

References

  1. ↑ Woman Reading a Letter, Johannes Vermeer, c. 1663, Rijksmuseum. Retrieved on 15 February 2015.
  2. ↑ (in Dutch) Brieflezende vrouw, Johannes Vermeer, ca. 1663, Rijksmuseum. Retrieved on 15 February 2015.
  3. ↑ Barker, Emma; Nick Webb; Kim Woods (1999). The changing status of the artist. Yale University Press. p. 194. ISBN   978-0-300-07742-1 . Retrieved 18 June 2010.
  4. ↑ White, James Boyd (1 April 2003). The Edge of Meaning. University of Chicago Press. p. 263. ISBN   978-0-226-89480-5 . Retrieved 18 June 2010.
  5. ↑ Snow, Edward A. (1994). A study of Vermeer. University of California Press. p. 168. ISBN   978-0-520-07132-2 . Retrieved 18 June 2010.
  6. ↑ De Winkel, Marieke (1998). "Interpretation of Dress in Vermeer's Paintings". Studies in the History of Art. 55: 326–330. JSTOR   42622616.
  7. ↑ White (2003), 265.
  8. ↑ Schneider, Norbert (17 May 2000). Vermeer, 1632-1675: veiled emotions. Taschen. p. 49. ISBN   978-3-8228-6323-7 . Retrieved 18 June 2010.
  9. ↑ Baker, Christopher. "Vermeer, Jan". Oxford Art Online. Retrieved February 27, 2017.
  10. ↑ Snow (1994), 167.

Further reading

Walter Arthur Liedtke, Jr. was an American art historian, writer and Curator of Dutch and Flemish Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was known as one of the world's leading scholars of Dutch and Flemish paintings. He died in the 2015 Metro-North Valhalla train crash.

Metropolitan Museum of Art Art museum in New York City, New York

The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. With 6,953,927 visitors to its three locations in 2018, it was the third most visited art museum in the world. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the eastern edge of Central Park along Museum Mile in Manhattan's Upper East Side is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art, architecture, and artifacts from Medieval Europe. On March 18, 2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side; it extends the museum's modern and contemporary art program.

International Standard Book Number Unique numeric book identifier

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.


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