
Read the visual description
Shown from the lap up against a dark background, a pale-skinned woman wearing a black dress looks out at us in this vertical portrait. Soft light coming from our left highlights her oval face, the peach blush on her cheeks, and her crisp white collar, cap, and cuffs. Her brown hair is pulled back under the cap that flares slightly over her ears and the wide, lace-trimmed collar covers her shoulders. She has dark eyes, a straight nose, and her pink lips are slightly parted. Her left arm, on our right, rests on a table covered with a rose-red patterned carpet next to two pieces of fruit, perhaps apples, and a book fastened with metal clasps. She rests her other arm on the arm of the wooden chair and holds a deep pink carnation the same color as the carpet. She wears a ring on the third finger of each hand. The artist signed the work with black paint against the dark background near the upper right corner: “Rembrandt. f.1656.”
National Gallery of Art · Painting
A Woman Holding a Pink
Rembrandt van Rijn
- Date
- 1656
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 103 x 86 cm (40 9/16 x 33 7/8 in.) framed: 132.1 x 116.2 cm (52 x 45 3/4 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 1937.1.75
- Credit line
- Andrew W. Mellon Collection
- Time span
- 1651 to 1700
- Department
- CNE-B
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- Baroque
- Dutch
- female
- portrait
- Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
Provenance
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 March 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 30 March 1932 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA.
Inscription
upper right: Rembrandt. / f.1656
NGA object ID 82. 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.