Museum goers here in Philadelphia will have a rare opportunity to see a Vermeer at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, as the painting Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, along with work by Frans Hals and Rembrandt pupil Gerbrand van den Eeckhout will be on loan from the Leiden Collection until March, 2014.
Those of us who live in Philadelphia and love Vermeer have the geographical advantage of being within a few hours travel of twelve of his 36 known works: four in D.C. at the National Gallery and eight in New York (five at the Met and three at the Frick, plus one if you count the current loan of Girl With a Pearl Earring); but it’s rare, if ever, that we get to see one here in town. I haven’t been in to the Museum to visit it yet, maybe this weekend.
Vermeer’s Young Woman Seated at a Virginal (as distinguished from A Lady Seated at a Virginal in London’s National Gallery) is one of his smaller works, at less than 10×8″ (25x20xm), and is believed to be one of last he painted. It is also the only Vermeer still in a private collection. There was some controversy about the attribution of this work over the years, but it has now come to be accepted as an authentic Vermeer.
For more on the painting, see the description on the Essential Vermeer website.
