Works by Early and Modern Painters of the Dutch School

The Guildhall Art Gallery held this loan exhibition of Dutch paintings from 28 April to 25 July 1903, under the direction of Alfred George Temple. Temple had organised an annual series of loan exhibitions at the gallery since the late 1880s, each devoted to a different national school, drawing large crowds to the City of London.

Vermeer’s A Maid Asleep appeared as catalogue number 188 under the title “The Cook Asleep.” The lender was identified in the catalogue only as “Monsieur x of Paris,” a convention used to preserve a private collector’s anonymity. Provenance records place the painting in a Parisian private collection throughout this period; it passed through the dealer Duveen in 1907–1908 before entering the collection of Benjamin Altman in New York.