Girl with a Flute

The small 20×18 cm (8×7 inch) artwork is painted on a wood panel, as is the uncontested Vermeer painting Girl with a Red Hat, which is the only other painting associated with Vermeer on a wood panel.[3] Girl with a Red Hat is slightly larger, 23×18 cm (9×7 inch).

The painting is a close-up portrait of a girl, facing front, wearing a widely conical striped hat and a blue-green fur-trimmed jacket, holding a double recorder. The background is a tapestry similar to that in Girl with a Red Hat.

The fur-trimmed jacket is known as a jak or manteltje, a garment very prevalent in at-home attire for Dutch women of all socioeconomic classes in the 17th century,[4] and commonly found worn by women in domestic genre paintings by mid to late 17th-century Dutch painters such as Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Mets, and Frans van Mieris. Similar jackets are worn in Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance and The Concert, and a yellow yak is worn in A Lady Writing.[2][5]

Girl with a Flute is a tronie, a study of a remarkable facial expression or a stock character in costume. This was a popular genre in Dutch Golden Age painting. Tronies were produced for the mass market, not for patrons. Unlike typical portraits, the models were not identified.

Girl with a Flute was owned by the family of Pieter van Ruijven and was sold at the 1696 Dissius auction in Amsterdam. It was probably one of the three tronies with catalogue numbers 38, 39, and 40.[6]

In the 19th century, the painting was owned by the Van Son family in Brabant. In 1923, the American art collector Joseph E. Widener bought the painting. Widener donated his extensive and valuable art collection to the National Gallery of Art in 1939. The Girl with a Flute was among the paintings in that collection.

The painting's attribution has been questioned for many decades, although prior to 2022 it was generally cautiously attributed to Vermeer.[7]

In October 2022 the National Gallery of Art announced that while the museum was closed during the coronavirus pandemic, its team of conservators, curators, and scientists examined the painting using microscopic pigment analysis and advanced imaging technology, and concluded that the work was not painted by Vermeer, and that as of October 8, 2022, the gallery would change the attribution of the painting to "Studio of Johannes Vermeer".[8][2][9] There had been suspicions in the past that Vermeer may have begun the piece but another artist finished the work; however the National Gallery of Art's team of curators, art historians, conservators, research conservators, research scientists, and imaging scientists concluded, based on the "fatal flaws" in execution they discovered in every layer and every stage of the painting, that Vermeer had no involvement in painting any of it.[4][9]

The National Gallery of Art concluded that "The mystery artist who painted Girl with a Flute was familiar with Vermeer’s unique methods and materials, but unable to achieve his level of expertise. They may have been a pupil or apprentice in training, an amateur who paid Vermeer for lessons, a freelance painter hired on a project-by-project basis, or even a member of Vermeer’s family."[10][9][11]

In his 2013 book Vermeer's Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery, and the Unknown Apprentice, Benjamin Binstock made an extensive case that Vermeer's eldest child Maria (born 1654) is the author of this and several other other "misfit" Vermeer paintings.[9][12] The National Gallery of Art's 2022 report noted that "While it is conceivable that Maria received instruction from her father and produced paintings in his manner while still in her late teens, prior to her marriage in 1674, the absence of proof to the contrary does not constitute support for Binstock’s provocative suggestion."[9][4][13]

In response to the National Gallery of Art's de-attribution announcement, Eric Jan Sluijter, professor of art history emeritus at the University of Amsterdam, argued that although the NGA's research was "hard to dismiss", he did not think they were indisputably right on all details. He noted that Girl with the Red Hat is also painted on wood, it is a similar composition to Girl with a Flute, and in his view it has similar deviations from Vermeer's technique. Rijksmuseum curator Pieter Roelofs decided to label the painting as an authentic Vermeer in the Rijksmuseum's 2023 Vermeer exhibition, the biggest Vermeer the exhibition ever with 27 Vermeer paintings aside from Girl with a Flute.[3]

The painting has undergone restorations, which have received critiques from art historians.

In his 1995 book Johannes Vermeer, Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. wrote: "Although the discolored varnish and old repaint that distorted the image were removed during the painting's restoration in 1995, even now extensive abrasion of the paint surface hinders a conclusive assessment of artistic quality. The blue glaze that once covered the back or the chair, for example, has now mostly disappeared, leaving visible only the reddish-brown underpaint. Nevertheless, the restoration and related technical examinations have provided a fuller understanding of both the complex compositional alterations and the sequence of paint layers that comprise this image, information essential for any informed judgment of attribution."[14][15]

Some of the modern restorations have received criticism, most vocally from Michael Daley of ArtWatch UK. In December 1995 he wrote to The Times, "The many dramatic changes evident in paintings cleaned for the Vermeer exhibition at the National Gallery in Washington constitute yet another art restoration debacle. Once again, critics applaud some alterations as 'discoveries' or 'gains' but ignore many others. We 'discover' (review. Arts, December 5) that Vermeer roughened part of his View of Delft with sand but are not told that one figure in the painting lost both his legs during the cleaning. Neither the catalogue nor reviews of the exhibition mention that the Young Girl with a Flute has lost four fifths of her necklace."[16]

• Bailey, A. (2002). Gezicht op Delft. Een biografie van Johannes Vermeer. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker. ISBN 978-90-351-2402-8.
• Wheelock, Arthur K. (1997). Vermeer: The Complete Works. New York: Harry N. Abrams. ISBN 978-0-8109-2751-3.

• National Gallery of Art
• Essential Vermeer