Vermeer Galleries - Quiet Rooms of Light
A stop on Washington DC National Mall Walking Tour, a free self-guided tour.
Only about 35 paintings by Johannes Vermeer survive, so every one counts, and the National Gallery owns three. They hang in the Dutch galleries on the West Building's Main Floor.
In Woman Holding a Balance, a young woman stands at a table, testing an empty scale while a painting of the Last Judgment hangs behind her. A Lady Writing shows a woman in a yellow jacket looking up from her letter, as if you had just come in. The tiny Girl with the Red Hat is painted on a wooden panel, and X-rays show it was painted over a portrait of a man.
A fourth picture, Young Girl with a Flute, was long counted as a Vermeer, but in 2022 the gallery's experts decided it was made in his studio by someone else.
Next, walk on to the French Impressionist galleries.
More on Wikipedia: Johannes Vermeer · Woman Holding a Balance · Girl with a Red Hat
Stops on this tour
- Washington Monument
- National Museum of African American History and Cu
- National Museum of American History
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
- National Gallery of Art
- United States Capitol
- United States Botanic Garden
- National Museum of the American Indian
- National Air and Space Museum
- Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
- The Smithsonian Institution Building - The Castle
- Freer Gallery of Art
- Jefferson Memorial
- World War II Memorial
- Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial
- Korean War Memorial
- Lincoln Memorial
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial
- White House Ellipse
- White House
- Lafayette Square