Smiling Girl

Smiling girl
Artist	Unknown artist, maybe Theo van Wijngaarden
Year	c. 1925
Type	Tronie
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	41 cm × 31.8 cm (16 in × 12.5 in)
Location	National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

The Smiling Girl, formerly thought to be by Johannes Vermeer, was donated by collector Andrew W. Mellon in 1937 to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Now widely considered to be a fake, the painting was deemed by the Vermeer expert Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. in a 1995 study to be by a 20th-century artist and forger, Theo van Wijngaarden, a friend of Han van Meegeren.[1]

References

1. Vrij Nederland, February 26, 1996, p. 35–69.
   - Vermeer: Erroneous Attributions and Forgeries