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A pretty girl, modelled on Terborch’s half-sister Gesina, sits at a table, its covering pushed aside to allow her to work. Instead, her sewing lies forgotten in its basket as she reads a letter. Young people reading or writing letters in Dutch paintings of the period are indicators of amorous correspondence and intrigue. In this case the distracting power of love is emphasised by the heroine’s neglect of her proper household duties. The picture, painted at the height of the artist’s ability in the first half of the 1660s, is remarkable for its subtle light and shadow, its rendering of material textures and its masterful use of colour. The picture has a distinguished provenance: in the eighteenth century it belonged to the French collector Blondel de Gagny, and was described, with a pendant of a girl writing, in the Place Royale by the art historian Dezallier d’Argenville in 1757.

The Wallace Collection

London

Title

A Lady Reading a Letter

Date

c.1665

Medium

oil on canvas

Measurements

H 44.2 x W 32.2 cm

Accession number

P236

Acquisition method

acquired by Richard Seymour-Conway, 4th Marquess of Hertford, 1848; bequeathed to the nation by Lady Wallace, 1897

Work type

Painting

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The Wallace Collection

Hertford House, Manchester Square, London, Greater London W1U 3BN England

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