Woman in a Large Hat

Her broad hat, woven from strips of pink and white cloth, throws half her face into shadow, while the rest of her stands in bright sunlight against a pale sky. Hats like this, the Rijksmuseum says, were worn above all by Romani women at the time, and at the court in The Hague they appeared at costume parties and parades. She raises a small basket of plums, and her white gown slips from one shoulder. The museum reads the plums and the bare shoulder as an erotic undertone, and gives the picture a second title, probably an Allegory of Summer. Everdingen's young woman warming her hands over a dish of coals, probably Winter, hangs in the same room. The two reached the museum separately, decades apart. This one was bought at auction in London in 2009, out of a private collection in Vienna.