How does this artwork elucidate its Ownership?
Girl with a Flute may have been first owned by the family of Vermeer's patron Pieter van Ruijven, and it was possibly sold at the 1696 Dissius auction in Amsterdam, probably catalogue number 39 or 40.By the 1870s the painting was apparently owned by the van Son family in the Netherlands, and then by marriage by the van Boxtel family. Subsequent heir Mahie van Boxtel en Liempde married Belgian art collector Jean de Grez (1837–1910).In 1906 the painting was discovered at the De Grez Collection in Brussels by Abraham Bredius, director of the Mauritshuis, who identified it as a Vermeer.Following the death of Jean de Grez, the painting was sold in 1916 to the Dutch collector August Janssen, who died in 1918. After his death the painting was exhibited publicly for a while and then sold to the New York art dealership Knoedler & Co. in 1921.In 1923, the American art collector Joseph E. Widener bought the painting. He donated it to the National Gallery of Art in 1942.
Amsterdam Joseph E. Widener Knoedler National Gallery of Art Knoedler & Co. Mauritshuis Abraham Bredius Pieter van Ruijven