Exhibition of 1888–1889

The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s loan exhibition of 1888–1889 included Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, entered in the catalogue as no. 29 under the title “Young Woman Opening a Casement.” The painting had been purchased in Paris in 1887 by Henry Gurdon Marquand, a New York financier and trustee of the museum, who formally presented it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1889 (accession no. 89.15.21).

The gift made this the first painting by Vermeer to enter an American public collection, a distinction the Met has held ever since. Marquand was elected president of the museum’s board of trustees that same year, and his broader donation of old master paintings substantially enlarged the institution’s holdings of Dutch and Flemish pictures.