In the manner of Johannes Vermeer
Dutch, 1632–1675
Girl with Headphones, 2026
Oil on canvas
50 × 40 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.3.3
She turns her head at the sound of us, which means the headphones are either off or not very good. The beanie is mustard, the jacket ultramarine, the phone in her hand dark. Vermeer's *Girl with a Pearl Earring* turns in exactly this way, as if someone had just said her name. Nobody knows who she was. Nobody here knows what this one is listening to, and she is not going to say.
The brief
A young woman glancing back over her shoulder toward the viewer, large white over-ear headphones over a mustard-yellow knitted beanie, a grey plaster wall lit from a window at the left, a phone in her hand. Seventeenth-century Dutch interior oil painting, a single figure absorbed in a quiet task beside a window on the left, cool daylight modelling every surface, ultramarine and lead-tin yellow against grey walls, pearly highlights, a tiled floor in perspective, hushed stillness, extremely fine smooth finish. Museum photograph of the oil painting, soft even gallery lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
