Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter has many friends at the Timken Museum of Art after the delightful summer she spent here in 2015, thanks to a generous loan from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. As evident in that masterpiece as well as in other of his works, including the recently (and dramatically) restored Woman Reading a Letter before an Open Window from Dresden, this seventeenth-century Delft master had a life-long fascination with the subject of women and letters. This lecture will examine how Vermeer captured, in quiet and subtle ways, the emotional impact for women of receiving a letter from an absent loved one.
Agenda:
4:30 - 5:30 - Wine and Charcuterie Reception
5:30 - 6:30 - Lecture
Dr. Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. is Senior Advisor to The Leiden Collection. He was previously curator of Northern Baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and Professor of Art History at the University of Maryland. He organized over forty exhibitions at the National Gallery, including Anthony van Dyck, Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt’s Late Religious Portraits, Jan Lievens, and Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting. He also helped organize exhibitions at other institutions, among them Vermeer: On Reflection at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden. Among Wheelock’s many publications are catalogues of the National Gallery’s Dutch and Flemish paintings. He also edited the on-line catalogue of The Leiden Collection.
Admission/Cost: $45 - $65
Location:
Timken Museum of Art
1500 El Prado
Balboa Park
San Diego, CA 92101
Sunday, October 16 - 4:30 PM to 6:30 PM
