Dutch Painting In The Seventeenth Century

(via The Outline of Art) William Orpen writes:

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Jan van der Meer, commonly known as Vermeer of Delft (1632-75), is one of the Old Masters whom modern research has rescued from unmerited neglect. Houbraken, a historian who wrote only forty years after his death, does not even mention him, and for two centuries his name was almost forgotten and his paintings were sold as works by De Hooch, Terborch, Metsu, or even Rembrandt. Then in the middle of the nineteenth century a French exile named Thoré spent three years (1858-60) studying records and archives in Holland and patiently searching out Vermeer’s paintings. Since Thoré published his account of his studies, the fame of Vermeer has rapidly spread and increased. Today he is one of the most costly and one of the most popular of the old masters.

Of his private life very little is known. Vermeer was three years younger than De Hooch, and fifteen years younger than Teborch. We know that as soon as he came of age in 1653 he married Catherine Bolenes and by her had eight children. He was evidently esteemed in his native city, for in 1662 and again in 1670 he was elected one of the principal officers of the Guild of St Luke of Delft. But fame is one thing and fortune is another. When Vermeer died in 1675 he had nothing to leave his wife and family but twenty six unsold pictures. If these were put into the market today they might fetch anything over a quarter of a million pounds—not a penny less—but there were no American millionaires in the seventeenth century; so poor Vermeer was judged to have died insolvent and his widow’s affairs had to be put in the hands of a liquidator, who happened to be the naturalist Leeuwenhoek.

To explain in words the incomparable charm of Vermeer’s painting is as simple and as difficult as to explain the beauty of light. The illumination in his pictures is as perfect as it is in the best works of De Hooch; and if the pictures of Vermeer are still more beautiful than those of De Hooch it is because Vermeer was a still finer and more subtle colorist. He was, indeed, one of the greatest colorists the world has ever known. He excelled in all subjects. His ‘Head of a Young Girl’ is one of the loveliest portraits in the world. This young girl is not strikingly beautiful in herself. She has a sweet face, and Vermeer has brought out the sweetness of her disposition and the charm of her youth; but he has done more than this: by the loveliness of his color—particularly by the contrast of the blue and lemon-yellow of which he was so fond—Vermeer has made her a joy for ever. Color of this lyrical beauty sings its own sweet song.

Vermeer’s ‘View of Delft’, also at The Hague, is the loveliest street scene or town view in art. It has the crystal purity of color and limpid atmosphere of Delft itself, which a living writer has described as ‘the cleanest city in Europe, looking as if all the houses were thoroughly scrubbed down and polished each day before sunrise.’ Nothing could be more natural, more true to the thing seen, than this painting, yet nothing could be more perfect in every quality that goes to the making of a work of art.

These two pictures are exceptional even among the paintings of Vermeer, and we come to consider his more numerous paintings of small figures in interiors, the richness he offers us makes selection embarrassing. It would be perilous to say ‘The Pearl Necklace’ is better than ‘The Milkmaid’ or other pictures one could mention; but it is certainly one of the best and shows how Vermeer could compete with De Hooch in ‘bottling sunlight’ and beat that master even at his own favorite game.

Vermeer’s art undoubtedly affected his contemporaries, those of his own age as well as those who were his juniors. Gabriel Metsu (1630-67) sometimes comes near to Vermeer, and the color of ‘The Letter Writer Surprised’ in the Wallace Collection has a tenderness which is apt to make even Terborch look a little hard. Metsu knows how to set his stage decoratively; his pictures are always sprightly; but his observation is less subtle, and his research into light and shade is not carried to the point of perfection reached by De Hooch and Vermeer.

Nicolas Maes (1632-93), another pupil of Rembrandt, though less gifted than Metsu, used to be thought of chiefly as a portrait-painter, but is now much esteemed for the anecdotal pictures he painted in his youth. ‘The Idle Servant’ is an amusing example of his work in this style, and shows both his own powers of observation and what he learnt from Rembrandt in the way of using lighting to enhance a dramatic effect. But if we look critically at the picture, say at the cat stealing the plucked bird, or at the whole area of the tiled floor, we shall have to admit that in drawing Maes was inferior to Dou, and in illumination far inferior to De Hooch or Vermeer. All these subject pictures were painted between 1655 and 1665 after which date circumstances drove Maes into ‘pot-boiling’ portraiture.

Dutch Painting In The Seventeenth Century (continued)