Wednesday 3rd September was my chosen gallery day given the weather forecast and on Tuesday evening I had decided to visit Kenwood House to see the two paintings, one by Johannes Vermeer, the other, a copy that may be attributed to Vermeer eventually.

The two paintings were hung close together in a 'traditional' manner with wall chains and a 'linear' picture light.

Low reflection glass was only moderately effective but I didn't notice the condition of the walls or the odd item between the top of the two works while looking at the works.

There was a certain amount of daylight from a very high roof-light so taking photographs was going to be challenging.

I ended up trying a few variations based around a very high ISO value 16,000 and as much depth of field f 2.8 - f 4.0 as available. The noise reduction in Lightroom is reasonably effective.

While it might be a good 'copy' I am certainly not convinced that the works are by the same hand!
The craquelure is not evident in the 'copy' and the supporting 'stretcher' is not visible which I recalled may be a feature of other Vermeer paintings.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)
The Guitar Player, c1672
oil on canvas
53 cm x 46.3 cm
(21 in x 18.2 in)

I have a couple of questions! Why would an artist who had produced a limited number of paintings in his career (34-36) decide to copy one of them? How long did it take Vermeer to make an individual painting? The indications are 3 months to a year so dedicating a similar time to making a copy seems unlikely!
I wonder if Vermeer might have 'supervised' the making of a copy?

I did wander around the rest of the ground floor collection and found a familiar Rembrandt painting...