Lady at her Toilet
Details
The story
Van Dijk signed this panel on the right, near the open door, and the museum dates it to 1720, two years after he had settled in The Hague. A young woman in a silk gown is dressing her hair, with a maid behind her at the table, the kind of polished little interior that wealthy owners liked to keep within arm's reach.
Its first recorded owner lived far from The Hague. Maria Louise of Hesse-Kassel, the widowed Princess of Orange, kept it at her court in Leeuwarden, the capital of Friesland, until 1731, when it passed to her son William IV. An inventory drawn up that year places the picture in the prince's own bedroom in the Leeuwarden palace.
In the 20th century it travelled again, lent from 1961 to 1976 to the Dutch embassy in Madrid. The Mauritshuis, which owns it, has shown it in the Gallery Prince Willem V in The Hague since 1977.
