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 genre of the work is similar to works painted by Hals in the early thirties, the rough brush strokes are more similar to his work in the sixties. Possibly, the man with the jug and Guldewagen himself are the same: In an old genre painting of Haarlem from the 1650s, a man is transporting beer jugs with a horse-drawn sled. The jugs have a red deer on them, the symbol of Guldewagen's brewery: 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,