Seeing double: Vermeer painting and its mysterious ‘twin’ go on show

By Gareth Harris

(CNN) — One of Johannes Vermeer’s most famous paintings, “The Guitar Player,” has gone on show alongside its “twin” in a new exhibition.

“Double Vision: Vermeer,” which opened at London’s Kenwood House on Monday, displays the Dutch master’s original 1672 image of the guitar-playing woman alongside its doppelgänger, “Lady with a Guitar.” In doing so, the new presentation reignites a century-old debate about who painted the latter, which was once thought to be Vermeer’s original.

“’The Guitar Player’ by Vermeer is an exquisite work of art, perfectly capturing a single moment in time. It is one of only 37 known paintings by Vermeer, an artist who specialized in depicting everyday life in domestic interiors,” said a statement from English Heritage, which runs Kenwood House.

“Since the 1920s scholars have puzzled over the relationship between these two paintings, but this display does not draw conclusions, instead inviting visitors to witness the prowess of one of the greatest artists of the 17th-century and respond to this question for themselves,” added English Heritage.

“Lady with a Guitar,” which is on loan from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, was assumed to be the original until the Kenwood House’s version emerged in 1927. As Kenwood’s “The Guitar Player” was in considerably better condition and appeared authentic, it was quickly accepted as the prime version.

In 2023, Arie Wallert, a former scientific specialist at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, told a symposium in Amsterdam that there are two versions of the work by Vermeer: the long-accepted painting at Kenwood House and the similar composition that has been in the Philadelphia museum’s collection for nearly a century.

The compositions are virtually the same, except for one key difference: the girl’s hairstyle. Kenwood’s sitter has her hair in ringlets, while Philadelphia’s does not. The Kenwood painting is also signed by Vermeer, while the Philadelphia version is not.

The Philadelphia picture’s ownership history appears to place it in the private Cremer collection in Brussels in the 19th century. It was later acquired by the Pennsylvania lawyer John Johnson, who died in 1917. The Kenwood painting was part of the Iveagh collection bequeathed by Lord Iveagh in 1927.

Over the past two years, conservators, curators and art historians from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, have reassessed the Philadelphia painting. New research has also been undertaken on the Kenwood painting by English Heritage and the National Gallery in London.

The research is ongoing with findings due to be revealed in a forthcoming article. However, according to English Heritage, key discoveries so far include differences in the ground layers (the first layer of paint applied to the canvas).

The Kenwood painting was prepared with a single pale gray-brown ground layer, while the color of the Philadelphia’s is dark brown. In addition, ultramarine paint used extensively in the Kenwood painting is not found in Philadelphia’s. Instead, the artist used indigo, a cheaper blue pigment.

Gregor Weber, the former head of the department of fine arts at the Rijksmuseum and a Vermeer specialist, said: “I am very curious to know more about these findings. Without knowing (this) information, the Philadelphia painting seems to be an early copy of the Kenwood original.”

“The hairstyle has been modernized in a style starting around 1680 as can be seen in several portraits of fashionable woman by Jan Verkolje in Delft, Nicolaes Maes in Amsterdam and others. This is the reason why I think it must be an early copy.”

Jennifer Thompson, the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s curator of European painting and sculpture and curator of the John G. Johnson Collection, said in a statement: “Double Vision provides a thrilling opportunity to place the two pictures side by side and to consider what science and connoisseurship offer to our understanding of Vermeer and 17th-century painting materials and techniques.”

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