Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister: The acquisition of the painting

Mädchen steht am Fenster und liest einen Brief

The acquisition and rediscovery of the painting in Dresden

The painting “Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” was acquired for the collection of the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, August III, in the spring of 1742 through a stroke of good fortune.

After the Saxon Secretary of Legation, Samuel de Brais, had successfully arranged the purchase of 30 paintings from the private collection of the Prince of Carignan in Paris, he was given the “Girl Reading a Letter” as an extra gift “outside the business deal”, as he mentioned in a letter. At that time, the painting was regarded as a “Rembrandt”, which shows that the exceptional quality of this work was certainly appreciated. The artist Johannes Vermeer, on the other hand, had by that time been completely forgotten outside Holland.

Brustbild Augusts III. mit Perücke und im Harnisch, Pastell — **Anton Raphael Mengs, Friedrich August II, Elector of Saxony, King August III of Poland, 1745**

The first mention of the painting in Dresden was in the inventory drawn up by Pietro Guarienti (1747/50) where it was again cited as a work “in the manner of Rembrandt”. The first printed Dresden Gallery catalogue, published in 1765, listed it as a work of the Rembrandt School, an attribution which was further refined in 1783 when it was ascribed to Govaert Flinck, a pupil of Rembrandt. From 1826 the “Girl Reading a Letter” in the Dresden collection was regarded as a painting by Pieter de Hooch who, like Vermeer, was active in Delft.

In 1859, however, the French art historian Etienne Joseph Théophile Thoré (1807–1869) alias William Bürger visited the Dresden Gallery. He was undertaking a spectacular tour of European art collections in order to examine paintings which might be attributable to the enigmatic artist whom he dubbed the “Sphinx of Delft”. In the Gemäldegalerie he was able to confirm his hypothesis that the “Girl Reading a Letter” was a further autograph work by “Vermeer of Delft” and was even signed. In fact, other art scholars before Thoré-Bürger had already considered the possibility that the Dresden painting might be attributable to Johannes Vermeer, but this idea had been very unpopular and so it was only in the 1860s that it was finally accepted. In 1862 the attribution was recorded in the Dresden Gallery catalogue drawn up by Julius Hübner, where the painting was now listed correctly and permanently under the heading “Meer (Jan van der). Né à Delfft vers 1632”.

Eintrag zu Johannes Vermeer im Dresdener Galeriekatalog von Julius Hübners 1862 — **Dresden gallery's catalogue entry for Johannes Vermeer by Julius Hübner 1862**

Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the “Girl Reading a Letter” underwent several restoration treatments, as documented in the restoration files of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie. These included relining the painting with a new canvas, cleaning the surface, removing old and adding new areas of retouching, and applying further layers of varnish to the paint surface. In the earliest reference to its restoration in Dresden, written in 1838, it is also noted that the “Girl Reading a Letter” had “certainly been in the hands of an earlier restorer”.

Gemäldeausschnitt unter dem Licht von Restauratorenlampen

During the Second World War, the “Girl Reading a Letter” was removed for safekeeping to a storage facility at Königstein Fortress in Saxon Switzerland. After the painting – like nearly all the works of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie – had been taken to the USSR as spoils of war in 1945, it was returned to the government of the GDR around ten years later along with the rest of the collection. Vermeer’s “Girl Reading a Letter” has once more been on display in the Dresden Gemäldegalerie in the Semper Building since June 1956.