Young Woman at an Open Half-Door

Public Domain

1645

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn and Workshop
Dutch, 1606–1669

This young woman, with her sidelong glance and the ambiguous lift at the corner of her mouth, exemplifies the playful nature of Rembrandt van Rijn’s character studies, called tronies, as well as his use of doorways and windows as clever framing devices. However, the overall flatness of this composition argues against Rembrandt’s authorship. It may have been created by a member of his prolific workshop and then endorsed as a studio product with the artist’s signature and date.

Status: On View, Gallery 213
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn
Title: Young Woman at an Open Half-Door
Place: Holland (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1645
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Inscribed bottom center on door: Rembrandt f. 1645
Dimensions: 102.5 × 85.1 cm (40 3/8 × 33 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Reference Number: 1894.1022
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/94840/manifest.json

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C. Vosmaer, Rembrandt. Sa vie et ses oeuvres, 2nd ed., The Hague, 1877, p. 538.
L[ouis] G[onse], “La vente de San Donato,” Chronique des arts et de la curiosité, no. 11, March 13, 1880, pp. 82-83.
Wilhelm Bode, Studien zur Geschichte der holländischen Malerei, vol. 2, Braunschweig, 1883, pp. 497, 609, no. 373.
Eugène Dutuit, Tableaux et dessins de Rembrandt. Catalogue historique et descriptif. Supplément à l’oeuvre complet du Rembrandt, Paris, 1885, pp. 9, 11, 21, 68, no. 310.
Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report, 1891, pp. 10-11, 31, no. 5.
Emile Michel, Rembrandt, sa vie, son oeuvre et son temps, Paris, 1893, French ed.?
Art Institute of Chicago Annual Report, 1895, p. 43.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Paintings, Sculpture and other Objects of Art in the Museum, 1901, no. 11, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, Important facts regarding The Art Institute of Chicago with reproductions of the Demidoff Masterpieces, Chicago, 1905, p. 9, ill. p. 10
Malcolm Bell, Rembrandt van Rijn, London, 1901, p. 156.
Wilhelm Bode and C. Hofstede de Groot, The Complete Work of Rembrandt. History, description and heliographic reproduction of all the master’s pictures with a study of his life and his art, vol. 4, 1900, no. 301, fig. 301.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Sculpture, Paintings, and other Objects, Chicago, 1907, p. 156, ill.
Art Institute of Chicago, General Catalogue of Sculpture, Paintings, and other Objects, Chicago, 1907, p. 159-60, ill.
Adolf Rosenberg, Rembrandt. Des Meisters Gemälde, 3rd, ed., ed. W.R. Valentiner (Klassiker der Kunst), Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1909, pp. 323 ill., 560.
C. Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, trans. Edward G. Hawke, vol. 6, London, 1916, pp. 187-8, no. 324.
Daniel Catton Rich, “Die Ausstellung Fünf Jahrhunderte der Frühmalerei’ in Chicago,” Pantheon 12 (1933), p. 376.
Hans Tietze, Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika (Vienna, 1935), p. 337, no. 174, ill.
Jakob Rosenberg, Rembrandt, Cambridge, Mass., 1948, p. 51, fig. 78.
Charles Fabens Kelley, “Chicago: record years,” Art News 51, 4 (1952), pp. 57, 59, ill.
A. B. de Vries, Rembrandt, Baarn, 1956, p. 54.
Jakob Rosenberg, Seymour Slive, E.H. Ter Kuile, Dutch Art and Architecture 1600-1800, Harmondsworth, 1966, p. 97.
Frederick A. Sweet, “Great Chicago Collectors,” Apollo 84 (1966), p. 190, pl. 5.
Benjamin A. Rifkin, “Rembrandt and His Circle, Part 3”, Art News 68, 7 (1969), pp. 33, ill., 90.
Juri Kusnezow, “Neue Forschungen zu Rembrandts ‘Danae’,” Bildende Kunst, no. 7 (1970), p. 377, fig. 7.
John D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America, New York, 1979, pp. 229 –30, ill. 213.
Sotheby Parke Bernet & Co., Highly Important Old Master Drawings from the Collection of Tobias Christ of Basel, April 9, 1981, p. 67, under no. 32.
Art Institute of Chicago 100 Masterpieces, Chicago, 1983, p. 18, pl. 22.
Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt, his life, his paintings, New York, 1985, p. 243, fig. 269.
Werner Sumowski, Drawings of the Rembrandt School, ed. and trans. by Walter L. Strauss, vol. 8, New York, 1984, p. 4056, under no. 1804x.
Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. 3, Landau/Pfalz, [1986], pp. 1951, 1954, 2010, no. 1326, p. 1326.
Peter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America, Grand Rapids, 1986, pp. 48, 50, fig. 67.
J. Bruyn, review of Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. 2 in Oud Holland 101 (1987), pp. 299-30, fig. 6.
David R. Smith, “’I Janus:’ Privacy and the Gentlemanly Ideal in Rembrandt’s Portraits of Jan Six,” Art History 11 (1988), 51, fig. 50.
J. Bruyn, review of Werner Sumowski, Gemälde der Rembrandt-Schüler, vol. 3 in Oud Holland 102 (1988), pp. 328-29, 333 n. 30.
Jacques Foucart, Peintres rembranesques au Louvre, les dossiers du département des peintures, no. 35, exh. cat., Musée du Louvre, Paris, 1988, pp. 80-81, ill.
Walter Liedtke, “The Collectors and Their Ideals,” in Ben Broos, Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat. (The Hague, Mauritshuis, 1990), p. 35.
Rembrandt van Rijn, Girl at a Window, exh. cat., Dulwich Picture Gallery, Dulwich, 1993, p. 64, under no. 13, ill, 65.
Neil Harris, “Chicago’s Dream, a World’s Treasure: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1893-1993,” Chicago, [1993], p. 24, pl. 6.
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Celeste Brusati, Artifice and Illusion. The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten, Chicago and London, 1995, p. 278 n. 62, as implausible as Hoogstraten.
Walter Liedtke, review of Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Rembrandt and his Age in Burlington Magazine 134 (1992), p. 830.
Celeste Brusati, Artifice and Illusion. The Art and Writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten, Chicago and London, 1995, p. 278 n. 62.
Walter Liedtke in Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt in The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Aspects of Connoisseurship, exh. cat., New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1995, vol. 2, pp. 28, 38, 136.
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London, British Institution, Pictures of the Italian, Spanish, Flemish, Dutch, and French Schools, 1818, no. 100.
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Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings, Drawings, and Etchings by Rembrandt and his Circle, 1935/1936, no. 4, traveled to Worcester Art Museum.
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Philadelphia Museum of Art, Diamond Jubilee Exhibition. Masterpieces of Painting, 1950, no. 37.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dutch Painting. The Golden Age. 1954, traveled to Toledo Museum of Art and Toronto, Art Gallery of Toronto
Art Institute of Chicago, Rembrandt after Three Hundred Years. An Exhibition of Rembrandt and his Followers, no. 8, traveled to Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Detroit Institute of Arts.
Berlin, Altes Museum, Rembrandt: The Master and his Workshop, September 13 - November 10, 1991, cat. 72, as attributed to Samuel van Hoogstraten; Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, December 4, 1991 - March 1, 1992; London, National Gallery, March 26 - May 24, 1992.

De Gueffier, Paris; sold Paillet, Paris, 1 March 1791, no. 67, “Une jeune Fille du pays de Frise, appuyée devant une croisée” (a young girl from Friesland leaning on a half-door”) together with a painting at half-length of a young soldier in armor, buckling his sword belt. François-Antoine Robit, Paris, sold Paillet and Delaroche, Paris, May 11 and following, 1801, no. 120, as a pendant to no. 119, portrait of a young warrior, for 2500 fr. to Lafontaine as an agent for Michael Bryan [see Edwards 1996, p. 304]; to George Hibbert, London [Hibbert and Sir Simon Clarke supplied the funds for Bryan’s extensive purchases at the Robit sale and retained many of the pictures]; offered for sale, Christie’s London, 13 1829, no. 68, bought in; by descent to Nathaniel Hibbert, until until 1875 [lent by him to London 1857 and memorandum dated April 28, 1905 of a conversation with Holland Hibbert in the Art Institute archives; copy in curatorial file]; by descent to A. Holland Hibbert [for this and the following transaction see the memorandum cited above]; sold by him to Prince Paul Demidoff (died 1885), San Donato, 1880; offered for sale Florence, Pillet, Le Roy and Mannheim, March 15-April 10, 1880, no. 1114, engraved, bought in [a half-length of a young warrior buckling his sword belt was no. 1120 in this sale, also engraved, and sold with 1894.1022 in the Gueffier, Robit and Hibbert sales, see Bikker 2005, no. R21]; by descent to Princess Demidoff (formerly Princess Lise Troubetzkoi), 1885; sold through Durand-Ruel, Paris, June 1890, as part of a group of Dutch and Flemish paintings, many from the Demidoff collection, with funds advanced by Martin A. Ryerson and other trustees of the Art Institute [annual report 1891]; the cost of 1894.1022 was re-imbursed by Ryerson.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.