Have yourself a Vermeer Xmas
For this most bizarre of Xmases I have taken Johannes Vermeer the Dutch master of the seventeenth century for company.
A good friend gave me his complete works a sumptuous publication by the Art Publisher Taschen for Xmas.
I have just read Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier and am now 2/3rds through Vermeer’s Hat (Timothy Brook).
As I enjoy art fiction I cannot imagine why it took me so long to read Girl with A Pearl Earring.
Perhaps snobbishly I thought it might lack proper research and scholarship. Little is known of Vermeer.
His total output is less than 40 pictures and – apart from fathering 11 children, being an art dealer and native of Delft – there are huge gaps.
He was Head of the prestigious St Luke Art Guild in Delft but was not renowned in his own time but three centuries on unlike Rembrandt who produced over 2000 works.
The lack of biographical detail serves Chevalier well as Smart Alices like me cannot expose her ignorance and display mine by finding fault.
The main character and narrator is 17 year old Griet who becomes a servant in the catholic Vermeer household, purchases and mixes the artist’s paints and sits for for him as the Girl with a Pearl Earring.
The novel works on every level: a description of life in 17th century Netherlands which just acquired independence; the depiction of the Vermeer household ruled by Maria Thins, Vermeer ‘s mother -in-law and above all how Vermeer painted.
Vermeer was a slow, deliberate painter hence his low output. Some painters can finish quickly like David Hockney and my friend Ken Howard others like Lucian Freud take ages.
I enjoyed the book immensely and will now rent the film.
I enjoyed Vermeer’s Hat less.
Here the author takes an object from a Vermeer picture, a Beaver Hat or a map and provides the historic detail e.g. fur trapping in Newfoundland or the opening of trade routes by the East India Company.
I am interested far more in the composition of Vermeer than Dutch trade expansion.
Soon I was reading the description of the picture The Geographer and skim-reading the history.
Have yourself – if not a Vermeer Xmas -a happy and enjoyable one.
We haven’t been told how Boris will be spending his Xmas but I doubt if Johannes Vermeer will come into it.
