The Tailor’s Workshop

This modest workshop reached the Rijksmuseum in grand company. It belonged to Adriaan van der Hoop, an Amsterdam banker who died in 1854 and bequeathed his paintings to the city, among them Rembrandt's Jewish Bride and Vermeer's Woman Reading a Letter. The city of Amsterdam still owns them and lends them to the museum. Inside the picture, the grandeur stops at the door. The room is plain and a little untidy. Scraps of cloth and a heavy tailor's iron lie on the tiled floor, a pair of shears rests on the worktable, and garments hang over a pole near the ceiling, with strips of cloth dangling on the wall beneath. The master holds up a coat for his customer, who has her market bucket on her arm, while a boy sews by the window. Brekelenkam signed and dated the chair in the foreground, Q.B. 1661.