1902 - Making a Home in the Mauritshuis and Colonialism

The Girl now sits in the Vermeer room of the Mauritshuis, an icon of the Dutch cultural tradition and national identity. She was bequeathed to the gallery in 1902, where she also became a sign and symbol of colonialism and the Dutch nation. The Mauritshuis is the former home of Johan Maurits, who was a colonist and the state-general of Dutch Brazil. The entire collection and the building itself was funded by the exploitation of colonial subjects, which in the “Golden Age” narrative would have been considered as Dutch ‘exploration’. Her transfer to the Mauritshuis collection cements her status as an instrument of nationalism. To expand on the politics of translating her image, there must be a focus on how she represents a colonial history.

There is one particular sign of this—her pearl. Where it might have been similar to the turban as a sign of an upper class aesthetic and values in the Dutch Republic, the meaning changes when she is placed in the heavily colonial setting of the Mauritshuis. Particularly, it can be read as part of the colonial exploitation of the Dutch “Golden Age”. Pearls were cultivated in the tropical colonies and exported as a status symbol and fashionable accessory. The reality is that her pearl is impossibly large, and probably not real. But as the Girl has come to represent Dutch womanhood and culture, her pearl must also represent the fallacy of the “Golden Age” and the colonial history of the Netherlands.