Lady at a Mirror by Candlelight

Schalcken painted this canvas around 1696 to 1700, soon after he came back from several years of work in England and settled in The Hague. At 76 by 64 centimetres it is big for him, and very big for a night scene, a kind of picture he usually kept small. The subject is simple. A lady looks into her mirror late in the evening, and the only light in the room is a candle. The painting's later history shows what such a piece was worth. It passed through the collection of Benjamin da Costa and then his widow, and in 1764 it was bought for the 16-year-old Prince William V for 810 guilders, about five times what had been paid for him the year before for a small early canvas by Jan Steen. It belongs to the Mauritshuis and hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V.