Moça com Chapéu Vermelho (Girl with a Red Hat) - Johannes Vermeer

Moça com Chapéu Vermelho (Girl with a Red Hat) - Johannes Vermeer
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Estados Unidos
Óleo sobre painel - 23x18 - 1665-1666




Girl with a Red Hat is a rather small painting, signed by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is seen as one of a number of Vermeer's tronies – depictions of models fancifully dressed that were not (as far as is known) intended to be portraits of specific, identifiable subjects. Others believe it is a portrait. Whether Vermeer chose family members as models or found them elsewhere in Delft is irrelevant to the appreciation of his paintings. Its attribution to Vermeer – as it is on a (recycled) wood panel and not on canvas – has been a matter of controversy with scholars on both sides of the argument.
The painting, supposed to be executed 1665–1666, may have been among those owned by Vermeer's patron, Pieter Claesz van Ruijven and possibly, through inheritance it may have been passed on to his wife, Maria de Knuijt who died 1681; her daughter, Magdalena van Ruijven; and Magdalena's husband, Jacob Abrahamsz Dissius. It is thought to have been sold on an auction in Amsterdam on May 16, 1696 (probably no. 38, 39 or 40).
It was bought at a sale at the Hôtel de Bouillon, in Paris on December 10, 1822 (no. 28.) by Baron Louis Marie Baptiste Atthalin for 200 French francs. After his death it came to his nephew and adopted son, Laurent Atthalin; by inheritance to Baron Gaston Laurent-Atthelin and by inheritance to his wife, Baroness Laurent-Atthelin. The painting was sold by M. Knoedler & Co., New York and London, in November 1925 to Andrew W. Mellon for $290.000, who deeded it on March 30, 1932 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust in Pittsburgh (a holding-place for Mellon's pictures while the National Gallery of Art was being established). The trust gave it to the NGA in 1937.
The painting is only known since a Paris sale of 1822, in which it was described as a work by Vermeer van Delft. It was sold for 200 French francs. Subsequently: collection Baron Atthalin, Colmar; collection Baron Laurent Atthalin; art gallery Knoedler, New York, 1925; collection Andrew W. Mellon, Washington. Since 1937, in the museum.
In this painting Vermeer repeated the posture of the arm in The Girl with a Flute, though she is seen from the other side, and is therefore leaning on her right arm, against the backrest of a chair decorated with lions' heads and rings. This picture was quite evidently painted with the aid of a camera obscura. That is indicated by his use of pointillism, bright dots of paint and occasional highlights on the folds. The light is falling at an angle from above onto her soft, feathery hat; on the top it is vermilion, and the lower shadowed part is a dark purple colour. The intensity of the light is such that the hat appears, at points, to be transparent. Its broad brim has the effect of casting a shadow over most of her face; only her left cheek, below her eye, is lit. The shading of her eyes, the centre of her face, is quite intentional; the principle of dissimulatio, a mysterious disguise, is being applied here, the intended effect being to heighten our curiosity.
It is assumed by some critics that this painting is not by Vermeer, but a later pasticcio. It, and the Girl with a Flute (in the same museum) are painted on wood, whereas all authentic Vermeer paintings are done on canvas. This work has been painted on an upside-down Rembrandtesque portrait of a man, and pigments considered to be older than the nineteenth century found in this painting come from the original and not from the modern pasticcio.
Girl with the Red Hat is one of Johannes Vermeer’s smallest works, and it is painted on panel rather than on his customary canvas. The girl has turned in her chair and interacts with the viewer through her direct gaze. Girl with the Red Hat is portrayed with unusual spontaneity and informality. The artist’s exquisite use of color is this painting’s most striking characteristic, for both its compositional and its psychological effects. Vermeer concentrated the two major colors in two distinct areas: a vibrant red for the hat and a sumptuous blue for the robe; he then used the intensity of the white cravat to unify the whole.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Vermeer also was an art dealer in Delft. There is no documentation of his artistic training or apprenticeship, but in 1653 he became a master in the Saint Luke’s Guild in Delft; he would serve as head of that guild four times in the 1660s and 1670s. Although he was well regarded in his lifetime, he was heavily in debt when he died in 1675. Only in the late nineteenth century did Vermeer achieve widespread fame for his intimate genre scenes and quiet cityscapes.