Not long ago the papers contained a little paragraph stating that Herr
Bredius, the curator of the Mauritshuis Gallery at the Hague, had just
returned from a journey of exploration in Russia, bringing back with
him over a hundred valuable pictures of the Dutch School which he had
discovered there, in country and city mansions and even in farmhouses;
for the Russian collectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
as is well known, greatly esteemed and desired (as who must not?) Dutch
art. That was all that the paragraph said, and since that was all we
may feel quite sure that among those hundred and more pictures there
was nothing from the divinely gifted hand of Jan Vermeer of Delft;
because the discovery of a new picture by Jan Vermeer of Delft is
something not merely for mention in a paragraph but among the special
news--something with which to agitate the cables of the world.
Can you conceive of a more delightful existence than that of Herr
Bredius--to be when at home the conservator of such masterpieces as
hang in the Mauritshuis on the banks of the Vyver, in the beautiful
and bland Dutch capital (some of which are his own property, and only
lent to the gallery), and when in mind to travel, to leave the Hague
with a roving commission to hunt and acquire new treasures? I can’t.
And that is why, when I am asked who I would choose to be were I not
myself, I do not say the King, or Mr. Pierpont Morgan, but Herr Bredius
of the Mauritshuis.
And yet if I had Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s wealth, I would.... But let us
consider first the life and works of Jan Vermeer of Delft.
Jan Vermeer, or Van der Meer, was born in Delft and baptized there
on 31 October, 1632. His father was Reymer Janszoon Vermeer, and
his mother Dingnums Balthasars. In 1653 he married, also in Delft,
Catherina Bolnes or Bolenes. How many children they had I do not
know, but eight survived him. It is generally believed that Karel
Fabritius, himself a pupil of Rembrandt and a painter of extraordinary
distinction, was Vermeer’s instructor; but the period of tuition must
have been very short, for Fabritius became a member of the Delft
Guild in 1652, before which he might not teach, and he was dead in
1654, killed by a powder explosion. A poem on the death of this great
painter by a Delft writer has a stanza to the effect that from the
ashes of that Phœnix rises Vermeer. There is very little of the work of
Fabritius to be seen; but his exquisite “Siskin,” a small picture of
the little musical shy bird, painted with the breadth that is commonly
kept for auguster subjects, hangs next Vermeer’s “Head of a Young Girl”
(my frontispiece) at the Hague, and would alone prove Fabritius to have
possessed not only strength but sweetness.
Dr. Hofstede de Groot, the author of a magnificent monograph on
Vermeer and Fabritius, published in 1907 and 1908, conjectures Vermeer
to have had an Italian master as well as a Dutch, and it is easy to
believe. I had, indeed, with none of Dr. de Groot’s knowledge, come
to a similar conclusion; and in the huddle of pictures in one of the
rooms of the Academy at Vienna I even found a copy of an Italian
picture--a Correggio, I think--which Vermeer’s hand might easily have
made, so luminous and liquid is it. That he visited Italy is more than
unlikely--practically impossible; but to gain that something Italianate
which his works occasionally discover there was no necessity for him
to have done so, for Italian painters settled in Holland in some
numbers. The “Diana and her Nymphs” at the Hague, and the “Christ in
the House of Martha and Mary” (which I have seen only in reproduction)
in Scotland, have each Italian characteristics; but I must add that in
Vermeer’s authorship of these pictures Dr. de Groot does not absolutely
believe.
The facts about Vermeer are singularly few, considering the high
opinion in which he was held by contemporaries. Almost the only
intimate thing told of him is the story of his unpaid bread bill, as
recounted by De Monconys, the French traveller. De Monconys visited
him in 1663 and wanted to buy a picture, but none could be found in
the artist’s house. Vermeer’s baker consented, however, to sell one
which was hanging on his wall and for which he had allowed 300 florins.
After Vermeer’s death, it is told, the baker’s debt of 3176 florins
was liquidated by two pictures. Since Vermeer’s wife is known to have
had rich relations and to have come into money from time to time, we
may guess this gigantic account to have been the result rather of bad
management than of poverty; for of all the painters of the world none
less suggests necessity than Jan Vermeer of Delft: on the contrary, his
work carries with it the idea of aristocracy and prosperity, certainly
a fastidiousness rarely associated with the father of a large family’s
struggle for existence in the seventeenth century. Moreover, we are
told that his prices, even when he was alive, were higher than those of
any painter save Gerard Dou, and such a guild as that of Delft would
not be likely to elect a starving man as its chief four several times.
No, if Vermeer owed money to his baker it was because he was
easy-going, placid, above such trifles, as other artists have been
before and since: indeed, occasionally still are, I am told. You can
see that Vermeer was placid: the fact shines in every picture. He was
placid, and he liked others to be placid too. His wife was placid,
his daughters (if, as I conjecture, certain of his models were his
daughters) were placid, his sitters were placid. His one undisputed
landscape shows that he wanted nature to be placid; his one street
scene has the dove brooding upon it.
Yet when we put in one balance the debt for bread and in the other the
very slender output of this famous artist, to whom a collector could
come even from distant France with a heavy purse, we are face to face
with a difficulty; because even placid men when they become chiefs of
guilds do not much care for continual reminders that they owe money,
and in such a small town as Delft Vermeer and his baker would have had
some difficulty in not often meeting. Moreover what of the butcher? And
the vintner? The inference therefore--especially when it is remembered
that the baker occasionally agreed to be paid in kind and hang we know
not which of the masterpieces on his wall--the inference therefore is
that Vermeer painted, was forced by necessity to paint, many pictures
in excess of the very small number at the present moment identifiable.
Of this, more later; but I want to bring out the point here, since it
is of the highest importance and might indeed completely alter the life
of Mr. Pierpont Morgan.
We may believe Vermeer to have been a home-keeping man from several
circumstances. One is that he was not only born in Delft (in 1632), but
he married in Delft (in 1653) and died in Delft (in 1675); another that
the years in which he was a chief of the Delft Guild, and therefore
a resident there, were 1662, 1663, 1670 and 1671; another that his
only famous landscape and his only known street scene are both Delft
subjects; and another that of his thirty odd known figure pictures,
thirty-one are lighted from the left precisely in the same way, which
leads one to suppose that most of them were painted in the same studio.
When I add that Vermeer died in December, 1675, at the early age of 43,
and that his executor was Antony van Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the
microscope (and probably his model for several pictures), I have said
all that is known for certain of his career.
To me it is not to Andrea del Sarto that the title of the “Perfect
Painter” belongs, but to Jan Vermeer of Delft. Andrea with all his
weakness was in a way greater than that: he had, one can see, finer
thoughts, sweeter imaginings, a richer nature than a perfect painter
needs; the phrase perfect painter limits him to the use of his brush,
and one thinks of him (and not wholly because Browning was a man of
genius) always as a human being too. But of Vermeer we know nothing
save that he was a materialistic Dutchman who applied paint to canvas
with a dexterity and charm that have never been equalled: in short,
with perfection. His pictures tell us that he was not imaginative
and not unhappy; they do not suggest any particular richness of
personality; there is nothing in them or in his life to inspire a
poet as Andrea and Lippo Lippi inspired Browning and Romney Tennyson.
Vermeer was not like that. But when it comes to perfection in the
use of paint, when it comes to the perfect painter--why, here he is.
His contemporary Rembrandt of the Rhine is a giant beside him; but
ruggedness was part of his strength. His contemporary, Frans Hals of
Haarlem, could dip his brush in red and transform the pigment into
pulsating blood with one flirt of his wrist, and yet think of his
splendid carelessnesses elsewhere. His contemporary, Jan Steen of
Leyden, had a way of kindling with a touch an eye so that it danced
with vivacity and dances still, after all these years; but what a
sloven he could be in his backgrounds! His contemporary Peter de Hooch
could flood canvas with the light of the sun, but how weakly drawn
are some of his figures! And so one might go on with the other great
painters--the Italians and the Spanish and the English and the French;
naming one after another, all with more to them as personalities than
Vermeer, all doing work of greater import; and all, even Michael Angelo
and Leonardo, even Correggio, even Raphael, even Andrea, even Chardin,
falling beneath Vermeer in the mere technical mastery of the brush and
the palette--no one having with such accuracy and happiness adjusted
the means to the desired end. He aimed low, but at his best--in, say,
six pictures--he stands as near perfection as is possible.
It is this joyful mastery that fascinates me and made it so natural,
when in the autumn of 1907 I was casting about for a motive for a
holiday, to say, “Let us pursue this painter, let us see in twenty-one
days all the Vermeers that we can.”
The farthest European city containing a Vermeer of which I then knew
being Vienna (I afterwards found that Budapest has a putative example),
we went there first; and there was a certain propriety in doing so, for
in the Vienna picture the artist is supposed to have painted himself,
and to begin with a concept of him was interesting and proper. The
“Maler,” as it is there called, is at Count Czernin’s, a comfortable
mansion at Number 9 Landes-gericht strasse, open to visitors only on
Mondays and Thursdays. There are four rooms of pictures, and nothing
in them matters very much save the Vermeer. An elderly butler is on
duty; he shows you the best place to stand in, brings a chair, and
murmurs such facts about the marvellous work as appeal most to his
imagination--not so much that it is a miracle of painting as that it
was acquired for a mere song, and that Americans constantly walk into
this room with blank cheques in their hands and entreat the Count to
fill them up at his pleasure. But no, the Count is too proud of his
possession. Well, I admire him for it. The picture may not have such
radiance as the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin, or such charm as the “Woman
Reading a Letter” at the Ryks, or such sheer beauty as the Mauritshuis
“Girl’s Head,” but it is brilliant and satisfying. It does not give me
such pleasure as certain others, to be named later, but it is in some
ways perhaps finer. Vermeer is seated at his easel with his back to
the world--a largish man with long hair under a black velvet cap, and
the careful costume of a man who can pay for his bread. Nor does the
studio suggest poverty. The artist is at work on the head of a demure
damsel whom he has posed near the window, with the light falling upon
her, of course from the left. The little mousy thing has a wreath of
leaves in her hair and a large book held to her breast; in her right
hand is a long musical instrument. On the wall is the most fascinating
of the many maps that the artist painted--with twenty little views
of Dutch towns in the border. Vermeer was the first to see the
decorative possibilities that lie in cartography; and he was also, one
conjectures, a geographer by inclination.
The beautiful blue Danube had so little water in it just then that the
voyage to Budapest would have taken almost twice as long as it should,
and there was not time. To make the journey by train, just for one
day, was an unbearable thought at that moment; although I now regret
that we did not go. The Budapest Vermeer is a portrait, a Dutch Vrouw,
standing, looking full at the world, without any accessories whatever.
Not having seen it, I can express no opinion as to its authorship, but
Dr. de Groot is doubtful, although he reproduces the picture in his
book among the practical certainties. So also does M. Vanzype, the most
recent of our painter’s critics, whose monograph, “Vermeer de Delft,”
in the “Collection des Grands Artistes des Pays-Bas,” was published in
1908. M. Vanzype goes farther, for he also includes the portrait of
a young man in the Brussels gallery for which the curator, M. A. J.
Wauters, has made out so eloquent a case, but which Herr Bredius and
Dr. de Groot both repudiate. For myself, all I can say of it is that
one does not jump to the denial of it as one did to the putative
example in our National Gallery, just completed by the addition of
its lost half. The Budapest Vermeer is in reproduction a beautiful
picture--a youngish Dutch woman with the inevitable placidity, but
not so open and easy-going as the personalities whom the artist chose
for his own pictures: she has folded hands and large white cape and
cuffs. M. Vanzype admits that this portrait and that of the young man
at Brussels lend colour to the theory of Thoré and M. Arsène Alexandre
that Vermeer studied for a while immediately under Rembrandt; but he
goes on to show that this was practically an impossibility.
Turning reluctantly away from Budapest, we went next to Dresden, which
has two Vermeers and a light and restful hotel, the Bellevue, very
agreeable to repose in after our caravanserai at Vienna. The Bellevue
is on the bank of the river and close to the Picture Gallery, into
which one could therefore drop again and again at off hours. The famous
Raphael is of course Dresden’s lodestar, and next come the Correggios,
and there is a triptych by Jan Van Eyck and a man in armour by Van
Dyck; but it is Vermeer of whom we are talking, and the range of
Vermeer cannot be understood at all unless one sees him in the capital
of Saxony. For it is here that his “Young Courtesan” (chastely softened
by the modest Baedeker into “The Young Connoisseur”) is found. It is a
large picture, for him, nearly five feet by four, and it represents a
buxom, wanton girl, of a ripe beauty, dressed in a lace cap and hood
and a bright yellow bodice, considering the value of the _douceur_
which a roystering Dutchman is offering her. Behind is an old woman
curious as to the result, and beside her is another roysterer, whose
face might easily be that unseen one of the artist in the Czernin
picture, and who is wearing a similar cap and slashed sleeves. The
party stands on a balcony, over the railing of which has been flung
one of the heavy tapestries on which our painter loved to spend his
genius. The picture is remarkable as being a new thing in Vermeer’s
career, and indeed a new thing in Dutch art; and it also shows that had
Vermeer liked he might have done more with drama, for the faces of the
two women are expressive and true; although such was his incorrigible
fastidiousness, his preference for the distinguished and radiant to
the exclusion of all else, that he cannot make them either ugly or
objectionable. The procuress is a Vermeer among procuresses, the
courtesan a Vermeer among courtesans. The fascination of the canvas,
though totally different from that of any other of his works, is equal
in its way to any: it has a large easy power, as well as being a
beautiful and daring adventure in colour.
The other Dresden picture is also a little off Vermeer’s usual path.
The subject is familiar: the Dutch woman reading a letter by a table,
on which is the customary cloth and a dish of apples; the light comes
through the same window and falls on the same white wall; but the
tone of the work is distinct, sombre green prevailing. It would be
thrilling to own this picture, but I do not rank it for allurement or
satisfaction with several of the others. It comes with me not even
fifth or sixth. Vermeer’s best indeed is so wonderful--the “View of
Delft,” the “Girl’s Head” at the Mauritshuis, the “Milkmaid” and “Woman
Reading a Letter” at the Ryks, the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin, the
“Street in Delft” at the Six Gallery, and the “Young Courtesan” at
Dresden--that anything below that standard--such is the fastidiousness
which this man’s fastidiousness engenders--quickly disappoints;
although the student working up to the best and reaching the best last
would be continually enraptured.
Next Berlin. After the “Girl’s Head” at the Mauritshuis, which among
the figures comes always first with me, and the “View of Delft,” it is,
I think, the Berlin “Necklace” that is Vermeer’s most charming work.
I consider the white wall in this painting beautiful beyond the power
of words to express. It is so wonderful that if one were to cut out a
few square inches of this wall alone and frame it one would have a joy
for ever. Franz Hals’ planes of black have never been equalled, but
Vermeer’s planes of white seem to me quite as unapproachable. The whole
picture has radiance and light and delicacy: painters gasp before it.
It has more too: it is steeped in a kind of white magic as the “View
of Delft” is steeped in the very radiance of the evening sun. Berlin
is to me a rude and materialistic city with officials who have made
inattention a fine art, and food that sends one to the “Continental
Bradshaw” for trains to Paris; but this picture is leaven enough. It
lifts Berlin above serious criticism. I hope that when we have fought
Germany in the inevitable war of which the papers are so consistently
full, it will be part of the indemnity.
The other Vermeer in the superb gallery over which Dr. Bode presides
with such dangerous enthusiasm (dangerous, I mean, to other nations),
is not so remarkable; but it is burnt into my memory. That white Delft
jug I shall never forget. The woman drinking, with her face seen
through the glass as Terburg would have done it (one likes to see
painters excelling now and again at each other’s mannerisms); the rich
figure of the Dutch gentleman watching her; the room with its chequered
floor: all these I can visualize with an effort; but the white Delft
jug requires no effort: the retina never loses it. Vermeer, true ever
to his native town and home, painted this jug several times. Not so
often as Metsu, but with a greater touch. You find it notably again in
the King’s example at Windsor Castle.
Berlin has also a private Vermeer which I did not see--Mr. James
Simon’s “Mistress and Servant.” Judging by the photogravure, this must
be magnificent; and it is peculiar in respect of being almost the only
picture in which the painter has a plain table-cloth in place of the
usual heavily-patterned tapestry. The lady in ermine and pearls is
evidently ordering dinner; the placid, pleasant maid has a hint of
Maes. The whole effect seems to be rich and warm. Two other pictures
I also ought to have seen before leaving Germany--one at Brunswick
and one at Frankfort. In the Brunswick painting a coquettish girl
takes a glass of wine from a courteous Dutch gentleman at the table,
while a sulky Dutch gentleman glooms in the background. On the table
is another of the white Delft jugs. The Frankfort picture is “The
Geographer at the Window,” dated 1668, which in the reproduction
strikes one as a most beautiful and dignified work, wholly satisfying.
The geographer--probably Antony van Leeuwenhoek--leans at his lighted
table over a chart, with his compasses in his hand. All the painter’s
favourite accessories are here--the heavy tapestry on the table, the
window with its small panes, the streaming light of day, the white
wall, the chair with its brass-headed nails. And the kind thoughtful
face of the geographer makes the whole thing human and humane. Vermeer,
I fancy, was never more harmonious than here. I shall certainly go to
Frankfort soon to translate this impression into fact.
At Amsterdam we went first to the grave and noiseless mansion of the
Six family at Number 511 Heerengracht, one of the most beautiful and
reserved of the canals of this city. A ring at the bell brought a rosy
and spotless maid to the door, and she left us for a little while in a
lobby from which Vermeer might have chosen his pictures’ blue tiles,
until a butler led us upstairs to the little gallery. I am writing
of 1907, before the negotiations for the purchase by the State of
Vermeer’s “Milkmaid” were completed, and we therefore saw it in its
natural home, where it had been for two hundred and more years. But
now, at a cost of 500,000 florins at twelve to the pound (or at nearly
£155 a square inch) it has passed to the Ryks. The price sounds beyond
reason; but it is not. Granted that a kind and portly Dutchwoman at
work in her kitchen is a subject for a painter, here it is done with
such mastery, sympathy, and beauty as not only to hold one spellbound
but to be beyond appraisement. No sum is too much for the possession
of this unique work--unique not only in Vermeer’s career (so far as we
know), but in all painting. What the artist would have asked for it we
do not know. At the sale of his works in 1696 it brought 175 florins.
Vermeer here is at his most vigorous and powerful. His other works
are notable above everything for charm: such a picture as the “Pearl
Necklace” at Berlin represents the ecstasy of perfection in paint; but
here we find strength too. I never saw a woman more firmly set upon
canvas: I never saw a bodice that was so surely filled with a broad and
beating bosom. Only a very great man could so paint that quiet capable
face. Some large pictures are very little, and some small pictures are
large. This “Milkmaid” by Vermeer is only eighteen inches by fifteen,
but it is to all intents and purposes a full length: on no life-size
canvas could a more real and living woman be painted. When you are at
Amsterdam you cannot give this picture too much attention; be sure to
notice also the painting of the hood and the drawing of the still life,
especially the jug and the bowl. It was this picture, one feels, that
shone before the dear Chardin, all his life, as a star.
The other Six Vermeer is that Delft façade which artists adore. The
charm of it is not to be communicated by words, or at any rate by words
of mine. It is as though Peter de Hooch had known sorrow, and, emerging
triumphant and serene, had begun to paint again. And yet that is, of
course, not all; for De Hooch, with all his radiant tenderness, had not
this man’s native aristocracy of mind, nor could any suffering have
given it to him. Like the “View of Delft,” like the “Young Courtesan,”
this picture stands alone not only in Vermeer’s record, but in the art
of all time. Many grow the flower now--there is a modern Dutch painter,
Breitner, whose whole career is an attempt to reproduce the spirit
of this façade--but the originator still stands alone and apart, as
indeed, by God’s sense of justice, originators are usually permitted
to. The sale of twenty-one of Vermeer’s pictures at Amsterdam in 1696
included the “Street in Delft” which the Six family own, and also a
view of houses, a smaller work, which fetched forty-eight florins.
(That is one of the Vermeers which have disappeared, Mr. Pierpont
Morgan, sir.)
The Vermeers at the Ryks were, in 1907, two in number (now made three
by the “Milkmaid”); and of these one I do not like, however much I am
astounded by its dexterity, and one I could never tire of. The picture
that I do not like, “The Love Letter,” shows, with the “New Testament
Allegory” at the Hague, the painter in his most dashing mood of
virtuosity. Neither has charm, but both have a masterful dexterity that
not only leaves one bewildered but kills all the other _genre_ painters
in the vicinity. Both were painted, I conjecture, to order, to please
some foolish purchaser who frequented the studio. But the other Ryks
picture--“The Woman Reading a Letter”--here is the essential Vermeer
again in all his delicacy and quietude. It was the first of his best
pictures that I ever saw, and I fell under his spell instantly. What I
have said of the “Milkmaid” applies also to the “Reader”; she becomes
after a while a full length. The picture is only twenty inches by
sixteen, but the woman also takes her place in the memory as life-size.
It is one of the simplest of all the pictures: comparable with the
“Pearl Necklace,” but a little simpler still. The woman’s face has been
injured, but it does not matter; you don’t notice it after a moment;
her intent expression remains; her gentle contours are unharmed. The
jacket she wears is the most beautiful blue in Holland; the map is
a yellowish brown; the wall is white. The woman, whose condition is
obviously interesting, is, I like to think, the Vrouw Vermeer, possibly
the mother of the young girls in the pictures at the Hague, Vienna and
Brussels.
The Hague is the most comfortable city that I know in which to see
pictures. It is so light and open, the Oude Doelen is so pleasant
a hotel, and the pictures to see are so few--just a handful of old
masterpieces at the Mauritshuis and just a handful of the romantics
at the Mesdag Museum. That is all; no formal galleries, no headaches.
Above all there are here the two most beautiful Vermeers that are
known--the “Young Girl”--and the “View of Delft.” Writing in another
place some years ago I ventured to call the Mauritshuis picture of a
girl’s head one of the most beautiful things in Holland. I retract
that statement now, and instead say quite calmly that it is _the_
most beautiful thing in Holland. And to me it is in many ways not
only the most beautiful thing in Holland, but the most satisfying and
exquisite product of brush and colour that I have anywhere seen. The
painting of the lower lip is as much a miracle to me as the flower of
the cow-parsley or the wing of a Small Heath. I said that the “Pearl
Necklace” was steeped in white magic. There is magic here too. You are
in the presence of the unaccountable. Paint--a recognized medium--has
exceeded its power. The line of the right cheek is surely the sweetest
line ever traced. I don’t expect you to come a stranger to this face
and feel what I feel; but I ask you to look at it quietly and steadily
for a little while, in its uncoloured photographic presentment, until
it smiles back at you again--as surely it will. Yes, even in the
photogravure reproduction that stands as frontispiece to this book lurk
the ghosts of these smiles.
Who was this child, one wonders. One of the painter’s, I think. One
of the eight, whom it amused him to dress in this Oriental garb that
he might play with the cool harmonies of yellow, green and blue, and
the youthful Dutch complexion. If this is so, it is one of his latest
pictures, for all his many children were under age when he died. It is
probable that the child in the Duke of Arenberg’s picture at Brussels,
in the same costume, was a sister. There is certainly a family likeness
between the two, and if, as one may reasonably suppose, Vermeer’s wife
was his model for certain of the other pictures, we may easily believe
that both were her daughters, for they have her candid forehead, her
placidity.
Think of what has been happening in the world during the years since
this sweet face was set upon canvas--the evolutions and tragedies,
the lives lived and ended, the whole passionate fretted progress of
the nations! “Monna Lisa” has smiled a century and more longer, and
she has been looked upon every day for centuries: this child, not a
whit less wonderful as a conquest of man over pigment, smiled unseen;
for when she was bought at a Hague auction a few years ago by Herr
Des Tombes for two florins thirty cents she was covered with grime.
Think of it--two florins thirty cents--and if she found her way to
Christie’s to-day I don’t suppose that £50,000 would buy her. I know
that I personally would willingly live in a garret if she were on its
wall. But leaving aside the human interest of the picture, did you ever
see, even in a reproduction, such ease as there is in this painting,
such concealment of effort? It was no small thing at that day for a
Dutchman to lay his colours like this, so broadly and lucidly. It is as
though the paints evoked life rather than counterfeited it; as though
the child was waiting there behind the canvas to emerge at the touch of
the brushwand.
And the “View of Delft”--what is one to say of that? Here again
perfection is the only word. And more than perfection, for perfection
is cold. This picture is warm. Its serenity is absolute; its charm is
complete. You stand before it satisfied--except for that heightened
emotion, that choking feeling and smarting eyes, which perfection
compels. The picture is still the last word in the painting of a town.
Not all the efforts of artists since have improved upon it; not one
has done anything so beautiful. It is indeed because he painted these
two pictures that I have for Jan Vermeer of Delft such a feeling of
gratitude and enthusiasm. Wonderful as are many of his other pictures
that I have described, they would not alone have subjected me to so
much travelling in continental trains by day and night. But to see this
head of a young girl and this view of Delft I would go anywhere.
To the “New Testament Allegory” I have referred above: it does not give
me pleasure except in its tapestry curtain. That detail is, I suppose,
among the wonders of painting. The other Mauritshuis Vermeer is the
“Diana and Her Nymphs”--that gentle Italianate group of fair women,
the painting of which Andrea himself might have overlooked. It is at
once Vermeer and not Vermeer. It is very rich, very satisfying; but I
for one should feel no sense of bereavement if another name were put
to it. As a matter of fact Nicholas Maes was long held to have been
its author. A fifth Vermeer the Mauritshuis chanced to possess when
I was there, for Herr Bredius had recently discovered in a Brussels
collection a very curious example from the magic hand--a tiny picture
of a girl with a flute, in a Chinese hat (or something very like it),
with an elaborate background: not a very attractive work, but Vermeer
through and through, and so modern and innovating that were it hung in
a Paris or London exhibition to-day it would look out of place only by
reason of its power. The picture is seven and a half inches by six and
three quarters, and now belongs to Mr. Pierpont Morgan.
After Delft, where we roamed awhile to reconstruct Vermeer’s
environment, but where, I regret to say, little is known of him,
Brussels. For Vermeer there, one must, as in Vienna, visit the home
of a nobleman--the Duke of Arenberg--and here again one falls into
the hands of a discreet and hospitable butler. The d’Arenberg mansion
is in the Rue de la Régence, just under the crest of the fashionable
hill. It is open to the picture lover, like that of Count Czernin,
only on certain days. The gallery is small and chiefly Dutch, with a
few good pictures in it. The Vermeer is isolated on an easel--the most
unmistakable perhaps of all, although so cruelly treated by time, for
it is a mass of cracks. Yet through these wounds the beautiful living
light of a young girl’s face shines--not the girl we have seen at the
Hague, but one very like her--her sister, as I conjecture--dressed in
the same Eastern trappings, a girl with a strangely blank forehead and
eyes widely divided, akin to the type of Madonna dear to Andrea del
Sarto. The same girl I think sat for the “Player of the Clavichord” in
our National Gallery, to which we soon come. She is a little sad, and a
little strange, this child, and only a master could have created her.
At Brussels also is one of Vermeer’s “Geographers,” in the collection
of the Vicomte du Bus de Gisegnies; but this I did not then know. And
in the Picture Gallery is the conjectural portrait of the young man of
which I have written above.
After Brussels, Paris--a good exchange. Paris has one Vermeer in
a private collection--Alphonse de Rothschild’s--an astronomer,
which I have not seen, and one in the Louvre--the beautiful
“Dentellière”--before which I have stood scores of times. This too
is very small, only a few inches square, but the serene busy head is
painted as largely as if it were in a fresco. The lighting is from the
right instead of the left--a very rare experiment with Vermeer.
It is greatly to be regretted that our National Vermeers are not
better, because to many readers of this essay they must necessarily be
the only pictures from his hand that they can study at all times; and
my ecstasies will appear to be foolish. The lady standing at a spinet
is a marvel of technique; the paint is applied with all Vermeer’s
charm of touch; the room is filled with the light of day; there are
marvellous details, such as the brass-headed nails of the chair, and
the little spot of colour on the head is fascinating; moreover there
is an agreeably ingenious scheme of blue, beginning with the gay sky
of the landscape on the wall, passing through the delicate tippet of
the lady and ending on a soberer note with the covering of the chair.
But it is not a picture of which I am fond; it is a _tour de force_;
and I think I positively hate the ugly Cupid on the wall, which would
be a blot on any man’s work, most of all on Vermeer’s. One feels
that he must have painted this to please the husband of the sitter,
who insisted on his pictures being immortalized. Vermeer, left to
himself, would have painted a map. The other--the seated girl at the
piano--lacks the painter’s highest radiance. It is the same girl that
we saw in the Brussels picture.
Of the other London Vermeers two (only two!) belong to Mr. Otto Beit.
One of these is a tiny “Lady seated at a Spinet,” not in the first
rank of fascination, but a little masterpiece nevertheless, and the
other, “A Lady Writing a Letter,” notable for the strong and beautiful
painting of the lady’s face, foreshortened as she bends over her
task. Beside her stands her blue-aproned maid, waiting to take the
missive to the door. The table has its usual tapestry and the wall its
picture, this time an old master. But the head of the lady is what
one remembers--with her white cap and her pearl drops and her happy
prosperous countenance.
Mr. Beit’s Vermeers are in Belgrave Square: there is another in Hyde
Park Gardens, the property of Mrs. Joseph: “The Soldier and the
Laughing Girl” it is called. The girl sits at the table with a bright
and merry face; the soldier, who has borrowed his red from Peter de
Hooch, is in the shade; on the wall is a splendid rugged map of Holland
and West Friesland. The picture is paintier than is usual with Vermeer,
but very powerful and rich. Mrs. Joseph (I am told) has been forced
by the importunities of collectors and dealers to have recourse to a
printed refusal to sell this work!
The Vermeer belonging to the King hangs in the private apartments at
Windsor, but when I saw it, it was, by the courtesy of His Majesty’s
Surveyor of Works of Art, carried into a less sacred room of that vast
and imposing fortress for us to look upon. The Court was absent, and
workmen were here and there, but one could have told that this was the
abode of a monarch, even had one been blindfolded. There was a hush! On
a walk of some miles (as it seemed) through dusky passages in which now
and then one saw dimly one’s face in a slip of a mirror at the corners,
we passed other creatures who had some of the outward semblance of
human beings; but we were not deceived. They were marked also by a
discretion, an authority, beyond ordinary mortality; not the rose, of
course, but so near it that one flushed. To have this new experience,
for I had never entered a royal castle before, and be on a visit to a
Vermeer, was a double privilege. The Vermeer is very charming, but not
one of the first rank; and its coating of varnish does not improve it.
But it is from the perfect hand none the less, and there is the white
Delft jug in it for the eye to return to, like a haven, after every
voyage over the canvas.
England also has Vermeer’s “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,”
which, when it was exhibited in Bond Street some few years ago, divided
the experts, but is now, although not confidently, given to our painter
by Dr. de Groot. This picture, which I have not seen, has in the
reproduction much of the large easy confidence of the “Diana and her
Nymphs” at the Hague. It hangs now in Skelmorlie Castle, and some day
I hope to blow a blast outside those Scottish walls and succeed in
getting the drawbridge lowered that I may look upon it.
There are nine examples in America to-day (1911). Of these Dr. de Groot
reproduces only six, for the other three have come to light since he
published. The six which he gives are--Mr. B. Altman’s “Woman Asleep”
(from the Rodolph Kann Collection), Mr. James G. Johnson’s “Lady with
the Mandoline,” Mrs. Jack Gardner’s “Three Musicians,” Mr. H. C.
Frick’s “Singing Lesson,” Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s “Lady with Flute,” and
“The Woman with the Water Jug,” in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
Of these I have seen only Mr. Morgan’s, described above. The three new
ones are Mr. Morgan’s “Lady Writing,” Mrs. Huntington’s “Lady with
Lute,” and Mr. Widener’s “Lady Weighing Pearls” (or gold), which was
exhibited in London early in 1911, and which brings Dr. de Groot’s list
to thirty-seven. This new Vermeer is not absolutely his best; it is not
so great and simple and strong as “The Milkmaid,” at the Ryks; it is
not so radiant as “The Pearl Necklace,” at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum
in Berlin; it is not so exquisite and miraculous a counterfeit of
life as the “Girl’s Head,” at the Mauritshuis; nor so enchanting and
epoch-making as the “View of Delft,” in the same gallery. Those I take
to be the artist’s four finest pictures. But it is well in his first
dozen, and it is vastly better than either of those in the National
Gallery.
The new picture represents a woman: one of those placid domestic
creatures to whom Vermeer’s brush lent a radiance only a gleam of
which many a Madonna of the Southern masters would have envied. How
little can they have thought, these Delft housewives and maidens,
that they were destined for such an immortality! She stands beside
a table, as most of Vermeer’s women do, and she has a jacket of
dark-blue velvet trimmed with fur, and a white handkerchief over her
head. The tablecloth also is blue; the curtain is orange. Standing
there, she poises in her right hand a pair of goldsmith’s scales.
On the table is a profusion of pearls (painted with less miraculous
dexterity than usual), and a tapestry rug has been tossed there too.
Behind her placid, comely head, on the wall (where Vermeer usually
places a map), a picture of the Last Judgment hangs, which may or may
not be identifiable. (I should doubt if Vermeer introduced it with
any ironical intention; that was not his way.) This picture is on a
light grey wall. The light comes, of course, from the left, and never
did this master of light paint it--or educe it--more wonderfully.
It triumphs through the window and curtain exactly as in “The Pearl
Necklace,” past the same black mirror. The woman’s face, however, has
the greatest lustre; from it is diffused a lambency of such beauty that
one might almost say that the rest of the picture matters nothing; such
a soft and lovely glow were enough. The work is not signed, except with
the signature of immanent personality.
Since the discovery of this picture--No. 36--yet another has
been found--a large group of children representing Diana and her
nymphs--which Mr. Paterson of Old Bond Street--the discoverer of
“Christ in the House of Martha and Mary”--has in his possession. Mr.
Paterson is a true Vermeer enthusiast, and not one of those with whom
the wish is the father to the thought. His new Vermeer is obviously
an early work and is on a larger scale than any of the others: it
has weaknesses of drawing and in more than one respect suggests an
experimental stage; but one cannot doubt its authorship, and everywhere
it is interesting, and here and there exquisite, especially in the
figure of the child in the left-hand corner. With this picture the list
of practically unquestionable Vermeers reaches thirty-eight.
There remain the one or two on the border-line of authenticity at which
I have glanced, and also a signed landscape in the possession of Mr.
Newton Robinson. This, if genuine (as I do not doubt), is Vermeer’s
only woodland scene, with the exception of those on the walls of other
of his pictures, such as that in the National Gallery, for example.
It is a soft brown landscape, as little like Vermeer as possible in
the mass. But in the detail--particularly in one detail--the signature
is corroborated. In the foreground is a little arbour with some young
people in it holding a musical party. The most prominent figure is a
girl crowned with flowers: and this girl is sheer Vermeer in attitude,
in charm, and in technique. The work is, I should guess, juvenile
and experimental, but it has many attractions and is of the deepest
interest as the thirty-ninth _opus_ on the side of certainty.
Vermeer’s practically unquestionable output thus totals thirty-nine
pictures. Think of the smallness of the harvest. Thirty-nine! That is
to say, hardly more for Vermeer’s whole career than the Boningtons to
be seen in a single London collection--that at Hertford House--where
there are thirty-five of his works. And Bonington died at the age of
twenty-seven. How many pictures by Bonington exist I know not, but
hundreds, I suppose, in all. And Vermeer has only thirty-nine to his
name, and lived nearly twice as long, and had eight children to support.
The question that confronts us, the question to which all these
remarks of mine have been leading, then, is, _Where are the others?_
Because there must have been others; indeed we know of a few, as I will
presently show; but there must have been many others, since Vermeer
began to paint when he was young, and painted till the end, and had
a working period of, say, twenty-four years--between 1652, when he
was twenty, and 1676, when he died. At the modest rate of only four
pictures a year this would give him a total of ninety-six pictures, or
nearly sixty more than we know of. But putting his output at a lower
rate--say at two pictures a year--that would leave us with several
still to discover. Of the existence at one time of two if not more of
these we have absolute knowledge, gained from the catalogue of the
Vermeer sale in Amsterdam in 1696, which I copy from M. Vanzype’s
pages, together with the prices that they made and his commentary:--
“1. A young girl weighing gold in a little casket. 155 florins.
“2. A milkwoman. 175 fls.
“3. The portrait of the painter, in a room. 45 fls.
“4. A young woman playing the guitar. 70 fls.
“5. A nobleman in his room. 95 fls.
“6. A young woman at the harpsichord, and a young gentleman listening.
30 fls.
“7. A young woman taking a letter from a servant. 70 fls.
“8. A drunken servant, sleeping at a table. 62 fls.
“9. A gay company in a room. 73 fls.
“10. A man and a young woman making music. 81 fls.
“11. A soldier with a young girl who is laughing. 44 fls.
“12. A young lace-maker. 28 fls.
“13. View of Delft. 200 fls.
“14. House at Delft. 72 fls.
“15. View of several houses. 48 fls.
“16. Young woman writing. 63 fls.
“17. Young woman adorning herself. 30 fls.
“18. Young woman at the harpsichord. 42 fls.
“19. A portrait in ancient costume. 36 fls.
“20. and 21. Two pendants. 34 fls.”