A girl at a window

This seemingly spontaneous scene shows a girl leaning on a cushion in a windowsill, with her head in hand. She is dressed in richly ornate costume and wears a pearl necklace and a gold chain with a large stone. Her lush hair is attired with what appears to be either a wreath or a small decorated headdress and strings of hair curl around her face. She seems to be deep in thought while she plays with a red cord attached to the shutter.

This attractive picture was long thought to be painted by Rembrandt on account of its relationship to a number of key pictures from the mid-1640s and early-1650s in which Rembrandt developed the theme of the single figure at a casement. The formidable Rembrandt scholar Abraham Bredius accepted it as by Rembrandt on this basis in 1938, a few years after the publication of his ground-breaking catalogue raisonne.

Works such as the ‘Girl at a window’ of 1645 in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, ‘Hendrickje Stoffels’ in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin and, more specifically, his ‘Kitchen maid’ of 1651 in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, exerted a strong influence on a whole host of artists in Rembrandt’s orbit. Amongst his most gifted pupils, Ferdinand Bol, Govaert Flinck, Nicolaes Maes and Samuel van Hoogstraten all adopted the theme. Maes painted his girl at a window, known as ‘The Daydreamer’, in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, in circa 1653, possibly when still in Rembrandt’s studio. With his predilection for trompe l’oeil paintings, Hoogstraten painted the subject of a boy or girl at a window on several occasions and it was to this artist that Werner Sumowski attributed the present work, on the basis of photographs, in 2002.

The present picture is accompanied by photo certificates by dr. Abraham Bredius, of 1938, and by prof. dr. W. Martin, of 1938 and 1947, both attributing the picture in full to Rembrandt and depicting Hendrickje Stoffels; and by a letter from Dr. Werner Sumowski, dated August 2002, giving the attribution to Hoogstraten and suggesting a date in the mid-1640s.

Rufford Abbey in Nottingham passed by marriage to the Savile family in the early 17th century. Upon its decent to the 3rd Baron Savile, who was only twelve years old, the trustees decided to sell off the estate in 1938. On 18 November that year a group of Old Master paintings was offered at Christie’s in a sale totalling 30,000 guineas. The auction catalogue records works by Canaletto, Van Dyck, Teniers, Gainsborough, Tiepolo, Murillo, Holbein, and Velasquez, along with no fewer than six paintings by Rembrandt. The present picture was the most expensive lot in the sale.