Catalogue of the Exhibition of Paintings by Old Masters

In 1867 Arti et Amicitiae, the Amsterdam artists’ society founded in 1839 and housed in a neoclassical building on the Rokin since 1855, organised a loan exhibition of paintings by old masters drawn from private collections. Two works by Vermeer were included: The Love Letter (catalogue no. 113) and A Lady Standing at a Virginal (catalogue no. 274).

The Love Letter was lent from the Amsterdam collection of Margaretha Catharina van Lennep, who had inherited it from her father Pieter van Lennep (d. 1850). A Lady Standing at a Virginal was owned before 1866 by the French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who had published his landmark three-part essay “Van der Meer de Delft” in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in late 1866, substantially raising Vermeer’s profile across Europe. The presence of both works in Amsterdam the following year reflects the growing attention that Vermeer’s paintings were attracting in Dutch collecting circles during this period.