Pieter Codde

Codde and his workshop produced a group of versions of this highly successful composition. The prime version is generally considered to be that which was sold New York, Christie's, 5 April 2006, lot 41, for $374,400. Extant examples include a similarly constructed and scaled oil on oval panel formerly in the H.L. Carey collection and sold, Fisher, Lucerne, 25-28 October 1944, lot 1562; oil on panel, 15 x 11 in. (39 x 28 cm), omitting the landscape painting on the back wall and substituting a fan for the piece of paper held by the woman (with Schaeffer Gallery, Berlin, about 1930; attributed to Codde by Hofstede de Groot); and a variant of the scene with the same sitter viewed from behind but turned to the left and before a table, oil on panel, 15 x 10 in. (38.5 x 27.5 cm; see Terugzien in bewondering, exh. cat., Mauritshuis, The Hague, 19 February - 9 March 1982, p. 90, no. 26, ill.). A variant with freer in handling and in which the seated woman is set in a larger room with a doorway at left from which a man emerges, had previously been given to Hendrik Pot, Dirck Hals, and Pieter de Hooch (oil on panel, 20 x 28 in. (60 x 72 cm); formerly with Goudstikker, Amsterdam).