By Gareth Harris
(NCS) — One of Johannes Vermeer’s most well-known work, “The Guitar Player,” has gone on show alongside its “twin” in a brand new exhibition.
“Double Vision: Vermeer,” which opened at London’s Kenwood House on Monday, shows the Dutch grasp’s authentic 1672 picture of the guitar-playing girl alongside its doppelgänger, “Lady with a Guitar.” In doing so, the brand new presentation reignites a century-old debate about who painted the latter, which was as soon as regarded as Vermeer’s authentic.
“’The Guitar Player’ by Vermeer is an exquisite work of art, perfectly capturing a single moment in time. It is one of only 37 known paintings by Vermeer, an artist who specialized in depicting everyday life in domestic interiors,” stated a press release from English Heritage, which runs Kenwood House.
“Since the 1920s scholars have puzzled over the relationship between these two paintings, but this display does not draw conclusions, instead inviting visitors to witness the prowess of one of the greatest artists of the 17th-century and respond to this question for themselves,” added English Heritage.
“Lady with a Guitar,” which is on mortgage from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was assumed to be the unique till the Kenwood House’s model emerged in 1927. As Kenwood’s “The Guitar Player” was in significantly higher situation and appeared genuine, it was rapidly accepted because the prime model.
In 2023, Arie Wallert, a former scientific specialist on the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, told a symposium in Amsterdam that there are two variations of the work by Vermeer: the long-accepted painting at Kenwood House and the same composition that has been within the Philadelphia museum’s assortment for practically a century.
The compositions are nearly the identical, aside from one key distinction: the lady’s coiffure. Kenwood’s sitter has her hair in ringlets, whereas Philadelphia’s doesn’t. The Kenwood painting can also be signed by Vermeer, whereas the Philadelphia model is just not.
The Philadelphia image’s possession historical past seems to position it within the personal Cremer assortment in Brussels within the nineteenth century. It was later acquired by the Pennsylvania lawyer John Johnson, who died in 1917. The Kenwood painting was a part of the Iveagh assortment bequeathed by Lord Iveagh in 1927.
Over the previous two years, conservators, curators and artwork historians from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, have reassessed the Philadelphia painting. New analysis has additionally been undertaken on the Kenwood painting by English Heritage and the National Gallery in London.
The analysis is ongoing with findings because of be revealed in a forthcoming article. However, based on English Heritage, key discoveries to date embody variations within the floor layers (the primary layer of paint utilized to the canvas).
The Kenwood painting was ready with a single pale gray-brown floor layer, whereas the colour of the Philadelphia’s is darkish brown. In addition, ultramarine paint used extensively within the Kenwood painting is just not present in Philadelphia’s. Instead, the artist used indigo, a less expensive blue pigment.
Gregor Weber, the previous head of the division of high-quality arts on the Rijksmuseum and a Vermeer specialist, stated: “I am very curious to know more about these findings. Without knowing (this) information, the Philadelphia painting seems to be an early copy of the Kenwood original.”
“The hairstyle has been modernized in a style starting around 1680 as can be seen in several portraits of fashionable woman by Jan Verkolje in Delft, Nicolaes Maes in Amsterdam and others. This is the reason why I think it must be an early copy.”
Jennifer Thompson, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s curator of European painting and sculpture and curator of the John G. Johnson Collection, stated in a press release: “Double Vision provides a thrilling opportunity to place the two pictures side by side and to consider what science and connoisseurship offer to our understanding of Vermeer and 17th-century painting materials and techniques.”
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