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
A Woman with a Basket of Beans in a Garden in the early 1660s and remarked that the man's portrait on the window shutter in the foreground only appeared after the painting was cleaned at some point during the years 1913-1927.. Depending on the year, the painting depicts a garden in Delft or Amsterdam, but in any case this scene's narrow garden is very similar to narrow gardens of other paintings De Hooch made: A Woman with a Basket of Beans in a Garden Woman with Basket of Beans in the Kitchen Garden (1651 or 1661) is an oil on canvas painting by the Dutch painter Pieter de Hooch. It