Catalogue of the Exhibition of Paintings by Old Masters

In 1890 the Hague artists’ society Pulchri Studio organised an exhibition of paintings by old masters, a form of show it mounted periodically alongside its exhibitions of contemporary work. Two Vermeers appeared in the catalogue: no. 116, The Love Letter, and no. 117, Girl with a Pearl Earring. They were among only a handful of Vermeer paintings known and accessible to exhibitors at the time.

Girl with a Pearl Earring had been acquired nine years earlier by the Hague collector Arnoldus Andries des Tombe at an 1881 sale in The Hague for a sum of two guilders with a thirty-cent premium. Victor de Stuers, a neighbour and fellow collector, identified it as a Vermeer after it was cleaned. Des Tombe died in 1902 and secretly bequeathed the painting, along with eleven other works, to the Mauritshuis, where it has remained ever since.

The Love Letter was still in private hands in 1890, held by the heirs of the Amsterdam collector Pieter van Lennep. It passed by descent to Margaretha Catharina Messchert van Vollenhoven-Van Lennep, and was sold at auction in Amsterdam in March 1892. The Vereniging Rembrandt stepped in to keep it in the Netherlands, and the Rijksmuseum acquired it in January 1893.