Young Woman in an Interior

Jacobus Vrel

National Gallery of Art

Warm, diffuse light fills a room where a girl sits, chin in hand, on a ladderback chair facing our left in profile in this vertical painting. She is at the opposite end of a long room from us, across an expanse of ginger-brown floor. A dark, cabinet-like form spans the far, narrow end of the room and we slowly realize that a woman with closed eyes lies in the shadowy bed enclosed within. Both women both have light skin. The girl in the chair wears a slate-gray skirt and cinnamon-brown jacket with a white kerchief draped down her shoulders. The back of her brown hair is covered by a pleated white cap. She is flanked by short, ladderback chairs with rushed seats along the far wall. To our left, in front of her, the top half of a Dutch door is swung inward. Light pours through the door and the deep-set window above it. The room has tall cream-white walls with dark wooden beams and a wooden ceiling overhead. The opening to the enclosed bed is lined with burgundy-red curtains, and two gleaming brass balls hang from the top edge. A perforated brass bowl hangs at the opening to our left. The right side of the room is nearly filled with a tall, wide fireplace mantel that supports an angled chimney rising to the upper right. Footed, pewter bowls hang from the top corners of the mantelpiece and a silver candlestick stands atop each of the two front corners. A small fire burns in the fireplace, while a pair of tongs and copper vessel stand nearby. The beams, door, doorframe, and mantel are all mahogany brown. Almond-white plates decorated with loosely painted strokes and daubs of brown are set along the ledges created by the molding over the bed and mantel.