“In what year was ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ sold at auction for 2 guilders?” It was sold in 1881.
Arnoldus Andries des Tombe bought the painting at an auction in The Hague in 1881. The price was just two guilders, plus a buyer’s premium of thirty cents, an astonishingly small sum compared with the painting’s modern cultural importance.
The bargain was partly explained by the fact that the work was then in poor condition and Vermeer was not yet recognized as one of the great figures of European painting. The artist’s reputation had faded after his death, and many of his works were not prominently identified or valued in the way they are today.
Des Tombe later left the painting to the Mauritshuis, along with other works, and it entered that museum’s collection in 1902. The painting’s current fame developed much later, especially through museum scholarship, exhibitions, reproductions, literature, and film. The 1881 sale is therefore often used to illustrate how dramatically an artwork’s perceived value can change over time.