Paintings by the Great Dutch Masters of the Seventeenth Century

In October 1942, Duveen Brothers mounted a loan exhibition of Dutch Golden Age paintings at their New York gallery, with the full title “Paintings by the Great Dutch Masters of the Seventeenth Century: Loan Exhibition in Aid of the Queen Wilhelmina Fund and the American Women’s Voluntary Services.” The proceeds went to the Queen Wilhelmina Fund, a member agency of the National War Fund that raised money in the United States for Dutch war relief as the Netherlands remained under German occupation. Professor Adrian J. Barnouw, the Queen Wilhelmina Professor of Dutch Language and Literature at Columbia University, wrote the introduction to the exhibition catalogue.

Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, on loan from the Rijksmuseum, had been stranded in North America since the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where it was one of the star loans from the Dutch pavilion. When Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, the painting could not safely return home and remained in the United States for the duration of the war, passing through the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art before appearing in this exhibition. It was among the most celebrated Dutch pictures then accessible in America. A Lady Writing, listed as catalogue number 68, was lent from a private collection and was at this time still unattributed to Vermeer in some quarters; the Duveen exhibition helped affirm its standing as an autograph work.

The exhibition ran for a month and drew visitors at a moment when the cultural ties between the United States and the occupied Netherlands carried particular resonance. For many New Yorkers, seeing these paintings gathered under one roof was both an aesthetic experience and a gesture of solidarity with the Dutch people. The dual benefit structure, combining the Queen Wilhelmina Fund with the American Women’s Voluntary Services, reflected the wartime habit of linking art events to relief efforts, turning the private gallery into a temporary site of civic purpose.