Masterpiece a Month: Presiding Genius Johannes Vermeer–A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (The Music Lesson)

Throughout 2011, Dulwich Picture Gallery marked its bicentenary with a year-long loan programme titled “Masterpiece a Month: Presiding Genius,” in which a single outstanding work borrowed from a major partner institution occupied the star position at the end of the gallery’s enfilade each month. The building, designed by Sir John Soane and opened in 1817, is arranged as a sequence of five interconnected rooms, and the terminal wall of that sequence provided a focused, almost altarpiece-like setting for each visiting work. The loans were drawn from institutions with which Dulwich had long-standing relationships, and many of the chosen works carried some historic connection to the gallery or its collection.

For March 2011, the gallery borrowed Vermeer’s The Music Lesson (c. 1662–65) from the Royal Collection, where it hangs in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace and is rarely available for public loan. The painting, acquired by King George III in 1762 as part of the collection of the Venetian consul Joseph Smith, depicts a young woman playing a virginal while a gentleman stands at her side, both figures reflected in a mirror above the instrument. The Essential Vermeer newsletter noted that the work was “too infrequently on public display,” making the month-long Dulwich showing a rare opportunity to see it outside its palace setting.

To accompany the display, curator and Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures Desmond Shawe-Taylor gave a lecture titled “Vermeer: The Music Lesson” on 17 March 2011. Admission to the talk included a glass of wine, and the event was open to both gallery friends and the general public.