Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid at least a degree of intimacy between the two. The painting visits many of Vermeer's usual painterly motifs; in particular his obsession with the inside/outside axis of interior spaces, and through his description of the tiled floor as well as the verticals of the dresses, window frame and back wall painting, his interest in geometry and abstract form. Vermeer had experimented with this painterly device earlier in his career, notably in his "View of Delft", "The Lacemaker" and "The Art of Painting". "Lady Writing" was stolen on 27 April 1974, along with a Goya, two Gainsboroughs and three Rubens from
Portrait of a Man with a Beer Jug Portrait of a Man with a Beer Jug Portrait of a man with a beer jug is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted in the early 1630s, now in a private collection. This painting was documented by Seymour Slive in 1974, who claimed that it was in the collection of Henry Reichhold in White Plains, New York. The figure of a red deer on the front of the beer jug corresponds with the house name "Het Rode Hert" of the Haarlem beer brewer Cornelis Guldewagen, whose portrait was painted by Hals in 1660. Though the