I
Who owns the thirty-fifth canvas by Jan Vermeer of Delft? And are
there more than thirty-five works by this master of cool, clear
daylight? I have seen nearly all the pictures attributed to the too
little known Dutchman, and as far as was in my power I have read all
the critical writings by such experts as Havard, Obreen, Bredius,
Hofstede de Groot (Jan Vermeer van Delft en Carel Fabritius, 1907),
Doctor Bode, Wauters, Arsene Alexandre, G. Geoffroy, Buerger, Taine,
John Smith, Gustave Vanzype, and several others.
Doctor A. Bredius has printed an article entitled: A Pseudo-Vermeer in
the Berlin gallery, which I have not been able to procure, but then
the same worthy authority has contested the authenticity of the
portrait of a young man in the Brussels Museum. It is not signed, this
beautiful head, and at one time it was in the English collections of
Humphry Ward and Peter Norton, and later in the Collection Otlet at
Brussels. Smith catalogued it as a Rembrandt; indeed, it had the false
signature of the great master. Much later it was accredited to Jan
Victoors, a Rembrandt pupil, and to Nicolas Maes, and under this name
was sold in Paris in 1900. A. J. Wauters finally declared it a
Vermeer, though neither Bredius nor Hofstede de Groot are of his
opinion. And now we hear the question: Who owns the thirty-fifth
Vermeer, Vermeer of the magical blue and yellow?
First let us ask: Who was Jan Vermeer, or Van der Meer? "What songs
did the sirens sing?" puzzled good old Sir Thomas Browne, and we know
far more about William Shakespeare or Sappho or Memling than we do of
the enigmatic man from Delft who died a double death in 1675; not only
the death of the body, but the death of the spirit, of his immortal
art. For several centuries he was not accorded the paternity of his
own pictures. To Terburg, Pieter de Hooch, Nicolas Maes, Metsu they
were credited. Even the glorious Letter Reader of the Dresden gallery
has been attributed to De Hooch, and by no less an authority than
Charles Blanc. Fromentin, of all men, does not mention his name in his
always admirable book on the art of the Low Countries; no doubt one
cause for his neglect.
This is precisely what we know of Jan Vermeer of Delft, in which
city--oddly enough--there is not a single canvas of his. In 1632 he
was born there. In 1653 he married Catherine Bolnes; he was just
twenty-one years old. His admission to the corporation of painters as
a master occurred the same year, as the books attest. In 1662 he was
elected dean of the corporation, and again in 1670. In 1675 he died,
in his forty-third year, and at the apogee of his powers.
When he became a member of the corporation of painters at Delft he
could not pay in full the initiation fee, six florins, and he gave on
account one florin ten cents--the entry in the books attests this
astounding fact. He was poor, but he had youth and genius, and he
loved.
He had also eight or ten children and lived happily--as do most people
without a history--on the Oude Langendyck, where he became at least a
local celebrity, according to a mention of him in the Journal des
Voyages, by Balthazar de Moncouys (published 1665). Moncouys also
recorded another interesting fact. "At Delft I saw the painter
Vermeer," he writes, "but none of his works were at his atelier; at a
baker's I saw a figure--for which was paid six hundred livres." At a
bakeshop! Vermeer, then, literally painted for his bread.
In 1696, twenty years after his death, certain of his works (forty in
the catalogue) brought only 100 florins, pictures that to-day are
worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in 1719 the superb Milk
Girl, now in the Rijks Museum, formerly from the Six Collection, was
sold for 126 florins (it brought $100,000 when Mr. Six sold it to the
museum), while at the same sale the mediocre Gerard Dou fetched 6,000
florins for a canvas. Even nowadays the public has not been converted
to the idea of the greatness of Vermeer. Go any time of the day into
the Mauritshuis at The Hague and you will always discover a crowd
before that clumsy, stupid bull with the wooden legs, by no means Paul
Potter's masterpiece, while the gem of The Hague gallery, the View of
Delft, with its rich pate, its flowing rhythms, its clear daylight,
seldom draws a large audience. And I do not doubt that only the
propinquity of Rembrandt's Young Saskia to Vermeer's Merry Company
(otherwise known as The Courtesan) in the Dresden gallery attracts an
otherwise indifferent public.
In 1696 there were 21 pictures of Vermeer sold at public auction in
Amsterdam. Of these 21 the experts claim to have discovered 16. But
the bother of the question is that 100 other pictures were also sold
at the same time; furthermore, the sale is said to have taken place
after the death of a venerable mediocrity, also named Vermeer, but
hailing from Haarlem. (He died in 1691.) This confusion of names may
have had something to do with the obscuring of the great Vermeer. But
he had no vogue in 1696, as the prices at the sale prove only too
well.
Vanzype gives the list, and its importance in any research of the
Vermeer pictures is paramount. Here are the 21 canvases that are
extant, and the prices paid: No. 1--A young woman weighing gold, 155
florins; 2--A milk girl, 175 florins; 3--The portrait of the painter
in his studio, 45 florins; 4--A young woman playing the guitar, 70
florins; 5--A gentleman in his chamber, 95 florins; 6--A young lady
playing the clavecin, with a gentleman who listens, 30 florins; 7--A
young woman taking a letter from her servant, 70 florins; 8--A servant
who has drunk too much asleep at a table, 62 florins; 9--A merry
company, 73 florins; 10--A young lady and a gentleman making music, 81
florins; 11--A soldier with a laughing girl, 44 florins; 12--A young
lacemaker, 28 florins; 13--View of Delft, 200 florins; 14--A house at
Delft, 72 florins; 15--A view of some houses, 48 florins; 16--A young
woman writing, 63 florins; 17--A young woman, 30 florins; 18--Young
woman at a clavecin, 42 florins; 19--A portrait in antique costume, 36
florins; 20 and 21--Two pendants, 34 florins.
The subsequent history of these pictures, while too copious for
transcription here, may be skeletonised. This may answer the question
posed at the beginning of this little story. Gustave Vanzype asks:
What has become of the young woman weighing gold, which reappeared at
a sale in the year 1701, which Buerger thought he had found in the
canvas, The Weigher of Gold. And the Intoxicated Servant? The latter
is in the Altman collection; the former at Philadelphia, in Mr.
Widener's gallery. But let us see how the wise doctors of paint
dispute among themselves. How many Vermeers are there in existence,
that is, known to the world, for there may be others, for all we know,
hidden in the cabinets of collectors or sporting other names? Buerger,
who called Vermeer the Sphinx among artists, has generously attributed
to him 76 pictures. This was in 1866, and since then a more savant
authority has reduced the number to 40. Havard admits 56. The Vermeer
of Haarlem was to blame for this swollen catalogue. Bredius and De
Groot have attenuated the list. The Morgan Vermeer in the Metropolitan
Museum, a Vermeer of first-class quality, is not in some of the
catalogues, nor is the Woman Weighing Pearls, now in the possession of
P. A. B. Widener, of Philadelphia, to be found accredited to Vermeer
in Smith's Catalogue Raisonne. But not much weight can be attached to
the opinions of the earlier critics of Vermeer. For them he was either
practically unknown or else an imitator of Terburg, De Hooch, or
Mieris, he whose work is never tight, hard, or slippery.
The following list of thirty-four admittedly genuine Vermeers may
clear up the mystery of the 1696 sale at Amsterdam. Remember that the
authenticity of these works is no longer contested.
In Holland at The Hague there are four Vermeers: The Toilette of
Diana, the Head of a Young Girl, An Allegory of the New Testament,
and the View of Delft. At the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, there are four:
The Milk Girl, The Reader, The Letter, and A Street in Delft. (This
latter is the House in Delft, which sold for seventy-two florins in
1696.) In Great Britain in the Coats collection at Castle Skalmorlie
(Scotland) there is Christ at the House of Martha and Mary. In the
National Gallery, a young woman standing in front of her clavecin. In
the Beit collection, London, a young woman at her clavecin. Collection
Salting, London, The Pianist. Windsor Castle, The Music Lesson. Beit
collection, A Young Woman Writing. In the Joseph collection, A Soldier
and a Laughing Girl. And the Sleeping Servant, formerly of the Kann
collection, Paris, then in London, and later sold to Mr. Altman. In
Germany we find the following: At the Berlin Museum, The Pearl Collar.
The Drop of Wine, in the same museum, Berlin. The Coquette, Brunswick
Museum. The Lady and Her Servant, in the private collection of James
Simon, Berlin. The Merry Company and The Reader in the Dresden
gallery. The Geographer at the Window, in the Staedel Institute,
Frankfort. In France, The Astronomer of the A. de Rothschild
collection at Paris, and the little Lacemaker, in the Louvre Gallery.
In Belgium, there was at Brussels the portrait of a girl, which was
formerly in the Arenberg gallery. When I tried to see it I was told
that it had been sold to some one in Germany. Its type, judging from
the head of a girl at The Hague, is not unlike The Geographer, in the
collection of Viscount Du Bus de Gisegnies, Brussels. A Young Girl,
collection of Jonkheer de Grez, Brussels. This last was discovered by
Doctor Bredius in 1906, and is at the present writing in New York at
the gallery of Mr. Knoedler.
In Austria-Hungary there are two noble Vermeers; one in the private
gallery of Count Czernin, the portrait of the painter, the other in
the Museum of Budapest, the portrait of a woman, the latter as solidly
modelled as any Hals I ever viewed. The Czernin Vermeer is the only
one in Vienna (the other Vermeer in this gallery is by Renesse). It is
a masterpiece. In it he grazes perfection.
The United States is, considering the brevity of the list, well off in
Vermeers. There is at Philadelphia the Mandoliniste of John G. Johnson
(without doubt, as M. Vanzype points out, the Young Woman Playing the
Guitar of the 1696 sale). At Boston Mrs. John Gardner owns The
Concert. At the Metropolitan Museum there is the Woman with the Jug
(Marquand); and the Morgan Letter Writer; H. C. Frick boasts The
Singing Lesson (probably known at the 1696 sale as A Gentleman and
Young Lady Making Music).
So the importance of the 1696 catalogue is indisputable. And now,
after wading through this dry forest of figures and dates and
haphazard or dogmatic attributions, we are at the fatal number,
thirty-four--only thirty-four authentic Vermeers in existence. Some
one must be mistaken. Who owns the thirty-fifth Vermeer? I again ask.