Is Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Vermeer ‘copy’ actually a rare original?

Inside the storeroom of the Philadelphia Museum of Art sits a 17th-century painting thought to be a copy of a Johannes Vermeer painting — until now. At a Vermeer symposium last week hosted by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, one scholar made the shocking claim that the painting in PMA’s collection is no copy; it is a rare original by the Dutch artist.

The news, first reported by the Art Newspaper, is potentially groundbreaking given the painter’s known body of work includes just 37 paintings.

Lady with a Guitar is the piece in question. PMA acquired it in 1933 as part of the John G. Johnson collection, but has never displayed the work. The painting was thought to be an original until another nearly identical artwork, The Guitar Player, appeared in 1927; that painting is part of the collection at London’s Kenwood House.

Experts determined that, due to its better condition, The Guitar Player was the original Vermeer and Lady with a Guitar was a copy made by an unknown copyist.

Arie Wallert, who made the surprising claim at the symposium, studies the style and technique of historical artworks from a scientific perspective. He believes that both paintings are original works by Vermeer and argues that the artist painted the pair from the same drawing. The scholar, a former specialist at the Rijksmuseum, closely analyzed the paint used in Lady with a Guitar and “identified traces of ultramarine, an expensive pigment used by the master, as well as lead-tin yellow … He describes the pigments he found as ‘combinations that nobody else used at the time,’” according to the Art Newspaper.

Though the two paintings are the same size and composition, the guitarist’s hairstyle differs. Kenwood’s The Guitar Player features long curls on either side of her face, while Lady with a Guitar shows a more modest pulled-back style. It’s unclear why the hairstyles contrast, and that fact could be evidence against Wallert’s argument, the Art Newspaper story suggests. The Guitar Player is also distinctive for the barely discernible fingerprints that Kenwood conservators discovered on the painting’s upper edge.

Wallert also noted that Lady with a Guitar was in terrible condition, with the paint severely damaged and the canvas torn, due to poor maintenance before it arrived at PMA.

“The painting has remained in stable condition since the Johnson Collection came under the care of the museum in the 1930s, although prior conservation efforts, sadly, had left the painting in a highly compromised state,” PMA director Sasha Suda wrote in a statement shared with The Inquirer.

The museum is aware of Wallert’s new research. Suda added that the PMA is “grateful for past and continuing contributions of scholarship to the discourse around Lady with a Guitar.”

“The future of Lady with a Guitar at PMA will be to inspire discussion, embracing scholarship, and to seek more knowledge and enlightenment from this mysterious painting nearly 350 years after its creation,” she said. “Our conversation at the museum now is focused on the wonderful impossibility that this work of art remains on earth, in our care, and that historic works of art connect people and ideas through time.”

The painting remains in PMA storage and it’s unclear whether the museum would consider putting it on display, particularly given its poor condition.

If Wallert’s claim is proven true, the discovery could be momentous for Philadelphia’s visual arts community and Vermeer enthusiasts across the world. For now, there’s still more studying to do to determine if Lady with a Guitar is an authentic Vermeer.