Experimentation and Innovation in Vermeer’s Girl with the Red Hat: New Findings from the National Gallery of Art

Considered within the context of his biography, overall artistic production, and seventeenth-century Dutch market for tronies, a recent multidisciplinary investigation Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with Red Hat (National Gallery Art, Washington) suggests that this small painting represents pivotal moment in artist’s career. Vermeer experimented here bolder, more abstract brushwork highly contrasting pigments—an approach grew out handling preparatory stages process he ultimately adopted high-life genre works as well. Positing an experimental foray presaged subsequent development also indicates likely date about 1669.