Can you name this Vermeer painting?

[kestrell]

I've been attempting to discover the title for my favorite Vermeer painting for a couple years, with no luck, so I thought i would post a description and find out if any of my friends could identify it.

The subject of the painting is a young woman, side view facing to the left, wearing a white apron and carrying a white pitcher. She is a little to the right of the painting, with a wall behind her. The wall and the stones beneath ehr feet are sunlit, giving them a slightly creamy gold color (for some reason, this always makes me think that it is early morning in the painting). The wall behind the young woman ends, leaving the upper left corner of the painting open to reveal a background showing a wooden ship with a bright blue sky behind it.

I don't think this is one fo Vermeer's most well-known paintings, but I love the color of the wall and that Vermeer blue sk

Comments

[capri0mni]

argh. It sounds lovely, from your description, but Google searches with keywords Vermeer, girl, pitcher, is pulling up hits of different paintings altogether.

I too, will be following the results of your quest....

[kestrell]

My LJ friend, Fabrisse, who will be our lovely docent for the tactile tour of the Arisia art show, posted this:
block quote start
It's "The Milkmaid" in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It took me a couple of
minutes to find it.
block quote end

I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on it, if you look it up on the Net--there is just osmething about the use of the creamy white in this painting and the blue sky that I love. If I were to get my room painted, I would do it in these two colors. Oh, also, someone with a complete works of Vermeer book couldn't find this painting in the book.

[capri0mni]

I wondered if it were "The Milkmaid" ... But in images of that painting I found online, she's not walking, and she's not wearing an apron (she's wearing a yellow blouse, blue skirt, and a white bonnet / cowl thing... and you can't see if she's barefoot or not.)

She's standing at a sideboard under an open window, pouring milk from a pitcher into a bowl, and there's bread and cheese laid out. But, yeah, there's the morning light spilling onto the wall that you mention, and the color scheme.

I was wondering if, maybe, your memory was playing tricks

[kestrell]

The more details I learn, the more I think I am conflating Vermeer's "Milkmaid" with a painting in a similar style by someone else. My memory is pretty good re paintings I saw when I was sighted, so I think the painting I originally described does exist, but perhaps it is by another painter who painted in Vermeer's style and used a similar palette.

On the other hand, I am currently reading _Thinking: Fast and Slow_, by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman, and one fo the things which he studies is why people are so prone to believing that their thinking is correct when it is actually in error.

[capri0mni]

My mind conflates things a lot, too. But mostly, it's stories I read.

And searching for Vermeer, in general, brought up a lot of parodies of his work, as well as works by other painters in his style.

So I wondered if that's what was happening, here. But I don't know enough of Vermeer to suggest it.