The Girl In A Picture Frame

Title

The Girl In A Picture Frame

Artist

Eric Glaser

Medium

Painting - Oil On Panel

Description

"The Girl in a Picture Frame (The Jewish Bride)"

Artist: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669)

Title: The Girl in a Picture Frame (The Jewish Bride)

Object Type: Painting

Genre: Portrait

Date: 1641

Medium: Oil on Panel

Dimensions: Height: 105.5 cm (41.5 in); Width: 76 cm (29.9 in)

Collection: Royal Castle, Warsaw, Poland

Current Location: Courtier Lodgings

Object History:

before 1696 : transferred to John III Sobieski, Warsaw
before 1769 : transferred to Friedrich Paul von Kameke, Berlin
1777: purchased by Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski, Warsaw from Elżbieta Henrietta Maria Gołowkin
1798: inherited by Józef Poniatowski, Warsaw
1813: inherited by Maria Teresa Tyszkiewiczowa, Warsaw
1815: purchased by Kazimierz Rzewuski, Vienna
1820: inherited by Lanckoroński family
1944: transferred to Gestapo warehouses, Altaussee
1947: transferred to Antoni Lanckoroński
1994: bequeathed to Royal Castle in Warsaw (ZKW) by Karolina Lanckorońska

Inscriptions: Signature and date: Rembrandt / f 1641

Notes: Augustus Poniatowski's collection inventory number: 207. The sitter's hands rest on the frame, breaching the boundary between sitter and beholder.

The Girl in a Picture Frame is a 1641 oil on panel painting by the Dutch artist Rembrandt. It is also known as The Jewish Bride and The Girl in a Hat. With The Scholar at the Lectern and Landscape with the Good Samaritan, it is one of only three Rembrandt paintings in Polish collections. It is currently located at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

Its authorship has sometimes been questioned, but was confirmed in 2006.

The sitter is framed by a feigned picture frame of which only the bottom and right side are visible. She wears a dark red, velvet dress, a black hat and pear-shaped pearl earrings. This type of costume is not associated with the fashion of the time. When it appeared in portraits, it was treated as ancient attire that suited well the mythical, historical, oriental or biblical subjects. Rembrandt often portrayed figures dressed in this manner both in his oil paintings and etchings.

It is not a portrait, but a tronie, or a study of a head or half-figure without any significant attributes or action. Rembrandt originally began to paint a different picture — of a woman seated, turned slightly to the left, wearing a dress corresponding to the fashion of the time, with a millstone ruff, and wearing a small bonnet. The figure was further to the right than the girl in the final version. The portrait of the woman in a bonnet was never completed and the panel was reused. Rembrandt was never known to have reused the support of a started painting for executing a portrait commissioned by a client.

Traces of the original composition were detected by x-radiation before the restoration work.

The picture underwent restoration at the Conservation Department of the Royal Castle, Warsaw (between May 2005 and March 2006). The overpainting was removed and where removal was impossible, due to the damage to the original paint layer, it was minimized. Traces of the original composition were detected by x-radiation before the restoration work. The original brushwork, prominent in the texture of the painting, became visible on the chest and the right sleeve once the overpainted fragments were removed.

The subject was known as the Jewish Bride from at least 1769. A few other works by Rembrandt portraying women with long, loose hair were given the same title in the 17th century. According to Jewish tradition, a bride wore her hair loose when signing the marital contract with her fiancée.

Ernst van de Wetering argues that the Girl in the Picture Frame is a typical example of Rembrandt’s interest, in the late 1630s and early 1640s, in Trompe-l'œil compositions. It is also an example of his search for new ways of representing movement. In van de Wetering’s opinion, the present painting is exceptional and can be seen as one of the few works, and possibly their prototype, demonstrating Rembrandt’s short-lived fascination with such questions.

Movement is suggested by the slight withdrawal of the girl’s right arm and the arrangement of her right hand as if suspended just above the edge of the illusionistic picture frame. The pearl earring hanging from her right ear and the fabric of the right sleeve also seem to be in motion. The illusion of breaking up the conventional pictorial space was created by painting the figure in a frame with both hands extending beyond it.

Text Credit: Wikipedia

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Additional image editing by Eric Glaser

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June 28th, 2020

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