Mistress and Maid

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Mistress and Maid: Johan Vermeer

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Johan Vermeer Oil Painting - Mistress and Maid

Keywords: Mistress, Maid

Work Overview: Mistress and Maid (Lady with Her Maidservant Holding a Letter)
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675)
Date:1666−67
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:35 1/2 x 31 in. (90.2 x 78.7 cm)

The subject of writing and receiving letters, which recurs frequently in Vermeer’s work, is given an exceptional sense of dramatic tension in this painting of two women arrested in some moment of mysterious crisis. The lack of final modeling in the mistress’ head and figure and the relatively plain background indicate that this late work by Vermeer was left unfinished. Nevertheless, the artist seldom if ever surpassed the subtly varied effects of light seen here as it gleams from the pearl jewelry, sparkles from the glass and silver objects on the table, and falls softly over the figures in their shadowy setting. Bought by Mr. Frick in 1919, the year of his death, this painting was his last purchase and joined Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait, Holbein’s Sir Thomas More, Bellini’s St. Francis, and Velázquez’ King Philip IV among his favorite acquisitions.

Mistress and Maid (c.1667) is a painting produced by Johannes Vermeer, now in the Frick Collection in New York City. The work of Johannes Vermeer, also known as Jan, is well known for many characteristics that are present in this painting. The use of yellow and blue, female models, and domestic scenes are all signatures of Vermeer. This oil on canvas portrays two women, a Mistress and her Maid, as they look over the Mistress' love letter.

Mistress and Maid was painted over the years 1666–1667 on a canvas. The painting shows an elegant mistress and her maid as they look over a love letter that the mistress just received. There are prominent Vermeer styles presented in this painting. There is a strong use of yellow in the woman's elegant fur-lined overcoat, and blue in the silk tablecloth and the maid's apron. The focus of the painting is the two women as they are sitting at a desk, doing an everyday activity. Vermeer was known for his domestic scenes containing women. The light in the painting comes from the left, and falls on the mistress' face, as is apparent from the shadow of the table on her legs. This painting can seem very straightforward at first glance, but it has deeper psychological implications.[according to whom?] If one looks at the image straightforwardly, one sees the mistress as she looks at the sealed love letter, hinting that she has a relationship with someone who is perhaps a great distance away. There is a hinted relationship between the maid and the mistress with their furtive glances and their body language, as they lean towards each other.[citation needed] The mistress has a pensive gaze, with her lips parted ever so slightly and her fingertips lifted to her chin in a questioning manner. The mistress' profile is slightly blurred and undefined and is meant to portray an idea that the woman is soft and sweet like another of Vermeer's paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring. The painting is preserved well and it has stylistic features such as the large scale of the figures, the dark background, and the dramatic modeling within the scene. In Mistress and Maid, Vermeer played with his medium and created texture and light with his works. For example, the lighted parts of the yellow overcoat are formed with sweeping brushstrokes of lead-tin-yellow and the shadows are created with definition. Dark backgrounds were used in portraiture after Leonardo da Vinci created the trend. They were used because they gave focus to the person in the portrait and enhanced the three-dimensional effect. Vermeer uses dark backgrounds in his other portraits such as Portrait of a Young Woman and Girl with a Pearl Earring. There is a prominent usage of pearls on the mistress in this painting. Pearls were an important status symbol of the period and that was reflected in the mistress' fancy attire and her abundance of pearls. A prevalent theme in Vermeer's paintings from around the late 1660s is letter writings. In earlier works, there is one woman isolated with a letter, but in this painting the added maid is a new element. This gives the painting a sense of anxiousness between the two women over the letter and its potential contents.

Provenance: The provenance of the painting is fraught with uncertainties, primarily because several times Vermeer treated the theme of a lady receiving or writing a letter while a maid is present. Thus, no. 7 in the Amsterdam sale of 1696 is described: "A young lady who is being brought a letter by a maid, by ditto; fl 70." It might apply to this painting, or to the Love Letter in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. The earlier provenance is therefore spotty. Sale Amsterdam, 1738. Art gallery C. Lebrun; Paris, 1807-8. Sale Lebrun, Paris, 1810. Sale Paris, 1818. Collection Duchesse de Berry, sale exh. London, 1834. Sale Duchesse de Berry, Paris, 1837. Collection Dufour, Marseilles. Sale E. Secrétan, Paris, 1889. Collection A. Paulovstof, Saint Petersburg. Art gallery Lawrie and Co., London. Art Gallery Sulley, London. Exh. Palais Redern, Berlin, 1906. James Simon, Berlin. Art gallery Duveen, New York and London. Collection H. C. Frick, New York, 1919.

The mistress, sitting at a table and turned to the left, wears the same yellow jacket with an ermine border as the Lady Writing a Letter. The maid interrupts her writing and hands her a letter. Both figures are close to the foreground, strongly illuminated, and standing out against the dark background, which lacks further adornment and remains undefined.

For Vermeer, this is an unusually large composition, which focuses on a moment of interaction and interruption, rather than on a contemplation of stillness and introvert thoughtfulness. This new approach enhances the monumentality of the scene.

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