The Guitar Player

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The Guitar Player: Johan Vermeer

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Johan Vermeer Oil Painting - The Guitar Player

Keywords: Guitar, Player

Work Overview: The Guitar Player
c. 1672
Oil on canvas, 53 x 46,3 cm
Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House, London

The Guitar Player is a 1672 painting by Jan Vermeer, on display in Kenwood House, London as part of the Iveagh Bequest. In 2012 Kenwood closed for renovations until autumn 2013, and the painting was on display in the National Gallery for this period, next to their own two Vermeers.[1] It was returned to Kenwood House in late December.[2]

On February 23, 1974, the painting was stolen from Kenwood House, and held for a ransom of over $1,000,000US in food to be distributed on the Caribbean island of Grenada, or else the painting would be destroyed by those who had stolen it.[3] Later, a small strip of the painting was sent to The Times along with a demand that Irish Republicans Marion and Delours Price be allowed to serve their prison sentence at home.[4] It was recovered by Scotland Yard in the cemetery of St Bartholomew-the-Great, in London's financial district, on May 7, 1974. Although the painting showed signs of dampness, it was otherwise undamaged.[5]

A period copy, A Lady Playing the Guitar, is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Provenance: Mentioned in 1676 as the property of Vermeer's widow and given by her as security to the baker van Buyten, together with Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid (Beit Art Collection, Blessington, Ireland), for a debt of fl 617. Subsequent sale Amsterdam, 1696, no. 4: "A young lady playing the guitar, very good, of the same; fl 70." Collection 2d Viscount Palmerston; collection W. Cowper-Temple at Broadland, later Baron Mount-Temple, 1871; art gallery Thos. Agnew, London, 1888. Acquired by the Earl Iveagh, 1889.

An old copy, canvas, 48,7 x 41,2 cm, is in the Museum of Art, Philadelphia. The only difference separating this copy from the Kenwood, London, version is the coiffure of the guitar player, whose style points toward c. 1700. It would be interesting to clean this painting and possibly ascertain, by X-rays, whether the original coiffure is still extant and was overpainted at a later date. Otherwise, both paintings are almost equal as far as pictorial quality is concerned.

Together with the Lacemaker (Louvre, Paris), this painting constitutes one of the best achievements by Vermeer, and certainly a towering success in his late maturity. By now, the artist had attained the mastery of light and colours, together with complete freedom of expressing himself technically by means of looser brushstrokes that are no longer bound to specifics of texture or materials. The model is not drawn inward but looks to the outside world in full communication and radiance of her pleasure simply to make music. Never was Vermeer more able to liberate himself from all constraints and convey his artistic viewpoint in a more masterly manner. The landscape on the back wall seems to be painted in the style of Hackaert.

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Johan Vermeer

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