Blog post alert: Eye Candy for Today: Tarbell's Preparing for the Matinee caught my eye because it plays with cool interior spaces and a hat. You know the old joke: A lady from New York asks Bostonians where they get their hats and the answer is, "We have our hats!"
Well, putting this hat on seems to be a fraught moment for the pensive girl in the painting. She reminded me of Norman Rockwell's Girl at a Mirror, without the kitchsy magazine to tell us what to think or the overturned doll to drive home the poignancy of pubescence. Instead, as Charley Parker points out in the blog post, the allusion contained in Matinee is to a Vermeer.
The painting strikes me as one that calls out to be seen in its frame. There is probably a way to impose various frames digitally around an image—of if not, there should be!