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A pale-skinned young girl leaning over a low fence and holding a broom gazes in our direction in this vertical painting. Her red hair is pulled back from her round face, and she has large hazel eyes under thin brows, a petite nose, and her coral-red mouth is slightly open. She is shown from the chest up, behind a wooden partition that spans the width of the painting. She wears a loose, ivory-white shirt under a garment with pumpkin-orange straps on the shoulders and chest. She leans forward with her elbows hooked over the partition as she holds a long-handled broom to her chest. A wooden pail with a bronze handle is overturned to the right of the broom. A blocky brown object to our left is difficult to make out. A dark brown semicircular object close to us in the center of the composition resembles the mouth of a well. Soft light from the upper left illuminates the girl and the left side of the caramel-brown wall behind her and throws the right side into shadow. A signature near the lower left looks like it had been painted on the inner edge of the well. It reads, “Rembrandt f. 1651.”
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A pale-skinned young girl leaning over a low fence and holding a broom gazes in our direction in this vertical painting. Her red hair is pulled back from her round face, and she has large hazel eyes under thin brows, a petite nose, and her coral-red mouth is slightly open. She is shown from the chest up, behind a wooden partition that spans the width of the painting. She wears a loose, ivory-white shirt under a garment with pumpkin-orange straps on the shoulders and chest. She leans forward with her elbows hooked over the partition as she holds a long-handled broom to her chest. A wooden pail with a bronze handle is overturned to the right of the broom. A blocky brown object to our left is difficult to make out. A dark brown semicircular object close to us in the center of the composition resembles the mouth of a well. Soft light from the upper left illuminates the girl and the left side of the caramel-brown wall behind her and throws the right side into shadow. A signature near the lower left looks like it had been painted on the inner edge of the well. It reads, “Rembrandt f. 1651.”

National Gallery of Art · Painting

A Girl with a Broom

Rembrandt Workshop (Possibly Carel Fabritius)

Date
probably begun 1646/1648 and completed 1651
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 107.3 × 91.4 cm (42 1/4 × 36 in.) framed: 135.26 × 120.65 × 7.62 cm (53 1/4 × 47 1/2 × 3 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1937.1.74
Credit line
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Time span
1601 to 1650
Department
CNE-B
Original NGA record Wikidata Print information

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Baroque
  • Dutch
  • domestic activities
  • genre
  • Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
  • Sweeping
Provenance

Almost certainly Herman Becker [c. 1617-1678], Amsterdam.[1] Pierre Crozat [1665-1740], Paris, before 1740; by inheritance to his nephews, first to Louis-François Crozat, marquis du Châtel [1691-1750], Paris, and then [on Louis-François' death without a male heir] to Louis-Antoine Crozat, baron de Thiers [1699-1770], Paris; the latter's heirs; purchased 1772, through Denis Diderot [1713-1784] as an intermediary, by Catherine II, empress of Russia [1729-1796], for the Imperial Hermitage Gallery, Saint Petersburg; sold February 1931, as a painting by Rembrandt, through (Matthiesen Gallery, Berlin; P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., London; and M. Knoedler & Co., New York) to Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded 1 May 1937 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA. [1] For Becker's collection, see Hugo J. Postma, "De Amsterdamse verzamelaar Herman Becker (c. 1617-1678) Nieuwe gegevens over een geldschieter van Rembrandt," _Oud-Holland_ 102 (1988): 1-21. The painting appears in the 1678 inventory (fol. 285r as "Een vrouwtje aende put van Rembrandt van Rijn").

Inscription

lower left on rim of well: Rembrandt f. 1651

NGA object ID 81. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.