some of the
catalogues, nor is the Woman Weighing Pearls, now in the possession of
P. A. B. Widener, of Philadelphia, to be found accredited to Vermeer
in Smith's Catalogue Raisonne. But not much weight can be attached to
the opinions of the earlier critics of Vermeer. For them he was either
practically unknown or else an imitator of Terburg, De Hooch, or
Mieris, he whose work is never tight, hard, or slippery.

The following list of thirty-four admittedly genuine Vermeers may
clear up the mystery of the 1696 sale at Amsterdam. Remember that the
authenticity of these works is no longer contested.

In Holland at The Hague there are four Vermeers: The Toilette of
Diana, the Head of a Young Girl, An Allegory of the New Testament,
and the View of Delft. At the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, there are four:
The Milk Girl, The Reader, The Letter, and A Street in Delft. (This
latter is the House in Delft, which sold for seventy-two florins in
1696.) In Great Britain in the Coats collection at Castle Skalmorlie
(Scotland) there is Christ at the House of Martha and Mary. In the
National Gallery, a young woman standing in front of her clavecin. In
the Beit collection, London, a young woman at her clavecin. Collection
Salting, London, The Pianist. Windsor Castle, The Music Lesson. Beit
collection, A Young Woman Writing. In the Joseph collection, A Soldier
and a Laughing Girl. And the Sleeping Servant, formerly of the Kann
collection, Paris, then in London, and later sold to Mr. Altman. In
Germany we find the following: At the Berlin Museum, The Pearl Collar.
The Drop of Wine, in the same museum, Berlin. The Coquette, Brunswick
Museum. The Lady and Her Servant, in the private collection of James
Simon, Berlin. The Merry Company and The Reader in the Dresden
gallery. The Geographer at the Window, in the Staedel Institute,
Frankfort. In France, The Astronomer of the A. de Rothschild
collection at Paris, and the little Lacemaker, in the Louvre Gallery.
In Belgium, there was at Brussels the portrait of a girl, which was
formerly in the Arenberg gallery. When I tried to see it I was told
that it had been sold to some one in Germany. Its type, judging from
the head of a girl at The Hague, is not unlike The Geographer, in the
collection of Viscount Du Bus de Gisegnies, Brussels. A Young Girl,
collection of Jonkheer de Grez, Brussels. This last was discovered by
Doctor Bredius in 1906, and is at the present writing in New York at
the gallery