One in every of Vermeer’s most well-known work—The Guitar Participant (1672)—goes on present right now alongside its “twin” in a brand new show at Kenwood Home in north London. Double Imaginative and prescient: Vermeer (1 September-11 January 2026) consists of the unique picture of the guitar-playing girl, which is housed at Kenwood, whereas its doppelgänger, Woman with a Guitar, is on mortgage from the John G. Johnson Assortment on the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork.
“The Guitar Participant by Vermeer is an beautiful murals, completely capturing a single second in time. It’s one in every of solely 37 identified work by Vermeer, an artist who specialised in depicting on a regular basis life in home interiors,” says an announcement from English Heritage which runs Kenwood Home.
The brand new presentation reignites debate in regards to the authenticity of the Philadelphia portray. “For the reason that Nineteen Twenties students have puzzled over the connection between these two work, however this show doesn’t draw conclusions, as a substitute inviting guests to witness the prowess of one of many best artists of the Seventeenth-century and reply to this query for themselves,” provides English Heritage.
Philadelphia’s Woman with a Guitar was assumed to be the unique, till the Kenwood model emerged in 1927. As Kenwood’s The Guitar Participant was in significantly higher situation and appeared genuine, it was rapidly accepted because the prime model.
In 2023, Arie Wallert, a former scientific specialist on the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, instructed a symposium in Amsterdam that there are two variations of the work by Vermeer: the long-accepted portray at Kenwood Home and the same composition that has been within the Philadelphia museum’s shops for almost a century.
The compositions are just about the identical, apart from one key distinction: the woman’s coiffure. Kenwood’s sitter has her hair in ringlets, whereas Philadelphia’s doesn’t. The Kenwood portray can be signed by Vermeer, whereas the Philadelphia model just isn’t.
The earliest agency provenance for the Philadelphia image seems to be the Cremer assortment in Brussels within the nineteenth century. It was later acquired by the Pennsylvania lawyer John Johnson, who died in 1917. The Kenwood portray was a part of the Iveagh assortment bequeathed by Lord Iveagh in 1927.
Over the previous two years, conservators, curators and artwork historians from the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork, in collaboration with the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork, Washington DC, have reassessed the Philadelphia portray. New analysis has additionally been undertaken on the Kenwood portray by English Heritage and the Nationwide Gallery in London.
The analysis is ongoing with findings on account of be revealed in a forthcoming article. Nevertheless, in line with English Heritage, key discoveries to date embrace variations within the floor layers (the primary layer of paint utilized to the canvas).
The Kenwood portray was ready with a single pale grey-brown floor, whereas the color of the Philadelphia floor is darkish brown. As well as, ultramarine paint used extensively within the Kenwood portray just isn’t present in Philadelphia’s. As an alternative, the artist used indigo, a less expensive blue pigment.
Gregor Weber, the previous head of the division of superb arts on the Rijksmuseum and a Vermeer specialist, tells The Artwork Newspaper: “I’m very curious to know extra about these findings. With out realizing [this] info, the Philadelphia portray appears to be an early copy of the Kenwood unique…
“The coiffure has been modernised in a mode beginning round 1680 as will be seen in a number of portraits of modern girl by Jan Verkolje in Delft, Nicolaes Maes in Amsterdam and others. That is the explanation why I believe it should be an early copy.”
Jennifer Thompson, the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork’s curator of European portray and sculpture and curator of the John G. Johnson Assortment, says in an announcement: “Double Imaginative and prescient supplies an exhilarating alternative to put the 2 photos facet by facet and to think about what science and connoisseurship supply to our understanding of Vermeer and Seventeenth-century portray supplies and methods.”
