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#120: By Aimee Ng, Curator Transcript

Here, Vermeer presents a light-filled scene of a young woman conversing at a table with an officer in a wide-brimmed hat. Like so many of Vermeer’s interior scenes, it may have been painted in the artist’s second-floor studio in his home in Delft. The resemblance of this woman to several other figures in Vermeer’s paintings has led some to suggest that she may be his wife, Catharina Bolnes, serving as a convenient, if also beloved, model. What exactly is taking place in the picture is uncertain; scholars have proposed a range of interpretations of the couple’s exchange, from delightful courtship to a transactional encounter between a prostitute and her client—both scenarios were common in Dutch genre painting of the seventeenth century.

The chairs with carved lion heads may be familiar from Vermeer’s Girl Interrupted at Her Music, also in the Frick’s collection. In this painting, the woman’s glass is of a type used for white wine. The artist renders the wall map behind the couple with such clarity that it can be identified: it is a map of Holland and Westfriesland, pictured with a west-up orientation, in which the blue areas indicate land, not water; these blue areas were probably originally green, before a yellow pigment faded over the centuries.

The map evokes the great age of Dutch exploration and commerce during Vermeer’s life, as does the man’s beaver-felt hat. Beaver was the preferred animal pelt from which to make men’s hats in this period, and it was hunted to extinction in northern Europe. Huge volumes of beaver pelts were imported into Europe from North America, through colonial trade with Indigenous communities. Modern scholarship has increasingly emphasized the toll on human life of this and many aspects of global trade in the seventeenth century. The degree to which Vermeer was concerned with the events taking place oceans away from his second-floor studio in Delft is unknown. In this painting, he seems to have been chiefly occupied with conveying touches of light, with the sparkle of this woman’s smile, with the broad silhouette of the swashbuckling officer.

Officer and Laughing Girl

 (Dutch, 1632–1675)
Dateca. 1657
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions19 7/8 x 18 1/8 in. (50.5 x 46 cm)
Credit LineHenry Clay Frick Bequest
Accession number1911.1.127
Commentary

In what may be one of the first works of his mature style, Vermeer transforms the theme of a girl entertaining her suitor, already popular in Dutch art, into a dazzling study of light-filled space. The dark foil of the officer’s silhouette dramatizes both the illusion of depth and the brilliant play of light over the woman and the furnishings of the chamber. The map of Holland on the far wall, oriented with west at the top, was first published in 1621. Both the map and the chairs appear in other paintings by Vermeer.

Source: Art in The Frick Collection: Paintings, Sculpture, Decorative Arts, New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

Collection History

Vermeer sale, May 16, 1696, Amsterdam, Lot 11, sold for 44 ½ florins. Léopold Double, bought, apparently as a de Hoogh, for 235 guineas in an unidentified London sale. Double sale, May 30, 1881, Paris, Lot 16, sold for 8,800 francs to Prince Demidoff di San Donato, Villa di Pratolino, near Florence. Mrs. Samuel Joseph, London. Knoedler. Frick, 1911.

Source: Paintings in The Frick Collection: American, British, Dutch, Flemish and German. Volume I. New York: The Frick Collection, 1968.

Not On View
Oil painting of woman sitting at table with man leaning over shoulder
Johannes Vermeer
ca. 1658–59
Oil painting of two woman by a table
Johannes Vermeer
ca. 1666−67
Silver medal depicting, in the foreground, lion standing upon implements of war, two cannons, a…
Johannes (or Jan) Lutma the Younger
dated 1667
Silver portrait medal of Joost van den Vondel draped, surrounded by a laurel wreath wrapped in …
Attributed to Johannes (or Jan) Lutma the Younger
dated 1679
oil painting of an officer in dark clothing with black hair against a dark gray background
Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
ca. 1804 (?)
oil painting of a woman in a yellow dress holding two pink roses
Workshop of François Boucher
1760s
oil painting of a girl with a spear in a landscape
Attributed to Jacques de Lajoue
ca. 1730–40
oil painting of a woman with Cupid in a landscape
Attributed to Jacques de Lajoue
ca. 1730–40
Oil painting of landscape with boats on a river
Aelbert Cuyp
ca. 1650
oil painting of a harbor with boats and a city skyline
Charles-François Daubigny
1877
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