The Milkmaid

A painter finding his way

The Rijksmuseum dates The Milkmaid to about 1660, while the Met's Walter Liedtke placed it in about 1657-58, among the last works of Vermeer's formative years. [1][2] In that early period, Liedtke wrote, Vermeer borrowed subjects and styles from other painters while adding effects drawn from direct observation. [2] He saw this picture on the threshold between that early work and the mature style. [2]

Vermeer produced a small number of paintings, perhaps about forty-five, mainly for a small circle of patrons in Delft. [3] As much as half of that output was acquired by one local collector, Pieter van Ruijven. [3]

Kitchen maids in Dutch art

Liedtke linked the picture to the detailed realism of Gerrit Dou and his Leiden followers, calling it Vermeer's most illusionistic image. [2] Dutch literature and pictures of the period often praised the steady performance of household chores, and it has been plausibly suggested that the maid is making bread porridge from stale bread and milk. [2]

There may be a second layer. Milkmaids and kitchen maids in earlier Netherlandish art often carried amorous overtones, and Liedtke read the Cupid tile, the foot warmer and a tile showing a travelling man as hints in that direction. [2] He was careful to add that Vermeer may or may not have intended the tilted jug as an erotic allusion. [2] Kitchen scenes were also a matter of taste. Essential Vermeer notes that the art theorist Gerard de Lairesse recommended that such pictures be hung only in kitchens, yet of seventy-two kitchen paintings recorded in specific rooms in Dutch inventories from 1600 to 1679, only three hung there. [4]

Patron, sale and fame

The painting was probably bought from the artist by Van Ruijven, who appears to have owned twenty-one works by Vermeer when he died in 1674. [2] When those pictures were sold from the estate of his son-in-law, Jacob Dissius, on 16 May 1696, The Milkmaid was called "exceptionally good" and fetched the second-highest price, behind only the View of Delft. [2] The Rijksmuseum records it as lot 2, sold for 175 guilders to Isaac Rooleeuw of Amsterdam. [1]

Its reputation travelled with it. At the sale of Jacob van Hoek's collection in 1719, it was listed as "The famous milkmaid, by Vermeer of Delft, artful". [2] It then passed through several Amsterdam collections, with recorded prices rising from 560 guilders in 1765 to 2,125 guilders in 1813, when it was bought for Lucretia Johanna van Winter. [1][4] She married into the Six family of collectors in 1822. [2]

Kept in the Netherlands

In 1908 the Rijksmuseum bought the painting from the heirs of Jonkheer Pieter Hendrik Six, along with thirty-eight other pictures, for 550,000 guilders, with support from the Vereniging Rembrandt. [1] Liedtke adds that the Dutch government also contributed. [2]

The purchase was contested. According to Essential Vermeer, the director of the Mauritshuis, Abraham Bredius, was convinced that the American collector J. Pierpont Morgan wanted the picture, and the question was argued in the press and in parliament. [4] Opponents led by the socialist Troelstra preferred to spend on modern art, while Victor de Stuers argued for keeping the painting in the country at any cost, and the majority agreed. [4] Cartoons showed the milkmaid turning down her American suitor, Uncle Sam. [4]

A century later the painting crossed the Atlantic on loan. The Metropolitan Museum of Art showed it in Vermeer's Masterpiece "The Milkmaid" from 9 September to 29 November 2009, with the Met's own A Maid Asleep among the works on view with it. [5]