blockbuster Vermeer Exhibition - Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, 2023.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-75) was a Dutch painter little known in own time. Though tr­ained as an artist, his con­version to Cat­h­olic­ism on marry­ing at 21, in a strongly Protestant country, was problematic. Luckily he inherited an inn and an art-dealing busi­ness on his father's death in Oct 1652. Yet money remained a problem; he had 11 child­ren with his wife Cath­ar­ina to support, and had no studio or students! So be­sides his art noth­ing of him remains eg contracts, letters.

Vermeer, Girl with a Flute

c1668

National Gallery of Art,

Unlike his contemporaries, Vermeer’s subjects were not civic or social gatherings; he was not Hals, ter Borch, Steen or van Ost­ade. When young, he moved onto gentle domestic scenes with fam­ily and friends as models, to avoid paying model­ling fees. His tran­quil indoor scenes used bright, colourful light and quality illus­ionism. In any case there was no nation as interested in domestic genre scenes as the post-Reform­ation Dut­ch.

Ver­meer left a small oeuvre, so his work later became prized treas­ures. He died at 43, in debt and buried in a pauper’s grave. It is believed that he only pro­d­uced 35+ pictures in total, desp­ite the sneaky eff­orts of for­ger Han van Meegeren in the 1930s to increase that number.

The Mauritshuis' 1996 exhibition did well when it brought together 23 of the Dutch mast­er's paintings.

Entrance to Rijksmuseum 2023

showing Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

The initial spark for this 2023 show came when the Rijksmuseum’s curators real­ised that the Frick Collection, which has not allowed its 3 Verm­eers to travel for over a cen­t­ury, was closing in 2023 for renovation. So Rijk­s­mus­eum immediately bor­rowed its 3 Ver­m­eers: Of­ficer and Laughing Girl (1655), Mistress and Maid (1666) and Girl Int­er­rupted at Her Music (1660). Then a team of cur­at­ors and restor­ers closely ex­am­ined the 7 Vermeers in Dutch poss­ess­ion, foc­using on his art­istry, designs mot­ivations and creat­ive pro­cesses. Th­ey collaborated with Hague’s Maurit­sh­uis and the Ministry of Educ­at­ion, Culture and Science.

Museums and private owners in 7 countries lent masterpieces for the show, including most of the intimate,  lit domestic scenes for which Vermeer was well known. London’s National Gallery sent Young Wo­man Seated at a Virginal; Paris’ Louvre sent The Lacemaker; and Dub­l­in’s National Gallery lent Woman Writing a Letter With Her Maid. Other artworks came from Berlin, New York and Tokyo. Some paintings were local. The Rijksmuseum’s 4 Vermeers are on show, and the artist’s famous Girl With a Pearl Ear­ring, was just down the road at Mauritshuis in The Hague.

It took much hard work, but in the end only 9 known works by the artist were missing Art News­paper noted: Boston’s Vermeer has been stol­en in 1990. N.Y’s Metropolitan ref­used 3 works due to their fragility, as did Kenwood House said about its Vermeer. Museums in Abu Dhabi, Vienna and Brun­sw­ick Ger­many just refused! And The Gui­t­ar Player (c1672) was guarded by English Her­it­­age who claimed the travelling days are over. Finally one from the Louvre is on loan else­wh­ere. Fortunately the Rijks­museum said that after met­ic­ulous scientific res­earch, it confirmed the attrib­ution to Vermeer of 3 works whose authent­ic­ity had been quest­ion­ed.

Now art lov­ers can see the best collection of Johan­nes Verm­eer's paint­ings altogether. Of the 35+ paintings experts attribute to the art­ist, the Rij­ks­museum exhibited 28. The Rijksmuseum already had 4 Ver­meers in its own permanent col­l­ec­tion, par­tnered with several internat­ional in­stitut­ions, including Maur­it­shuis The Hague; Musée du Louvre Paris; New York’s Frick Col­lection and Metropolitan Museum of Art, to gather them into a super exhib­it with 28 of the artist’s 35 known works. 

The exhibition, Feb-June 2023, includes the treasures we know eg Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring 1664 (Mauritshuis The Hague), Geographer (Städel Museum Frank­furt), Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid 1670 (Nat­ion­al Gall Ire­l­and Dublin), Milkmaid 1658 (Rijksmuseum) and Woman Holding a Bal­ance (Nat­ional Gallery Art Wash DC).

Visitors will also see some lesser known works eg Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (1670). And the newly restored Girl Reading a Letter at the Open Window 1657 (Gemälde­galerie Alte Meister Dres­d­en) is new to us. Al­most all Verm­eers are now in museums, but in 2004 Virginals left private hands and was auction­ed at Sotheby’s for £16m. One of 4 Vermeers in the National Gallery of Art Wash D.C, Girl with a Flute c1668 showed a girl clut­ch­­ing a gold flute. Experts who analysed the painting said it lacked Ver­m­eer’s typ­ic­al prec­ision and the top paint la­yer contained atyp­ical coarse pigm­ents. Was it made by a Ver­m­eer as­s­oc­iate? There were no sur­v­iving rec­ords of any workshop or ass­is­tants, so the Rijk­smuseum re­versed the National Gallery’s ruling and reinstated the painting.

By the mid-1800s, his baroque works seemed timeless, because passion, suf­f­ering and sex were excluded from his art. Even in the View of Delft, the poised figures were unexpres­sive.  The Dutch mid­dle class wan­ted small, real­­istic im­ages of their lives, im­ag­es where ed­uc­at­ion, explor­at­ion, sc­ience, busin­ess and Prot­es­tant vir­tues were hon­our­ed. Most Dutch paintings were descriptive of that era, of prosperous society in the newly ind­epend­ent Netherlands. And Vermeer’s fig­ures were often set across a foreground of cur­tains, tiles and furniture. His only male sub­ject was his friend Anton­ie van Leeuwen­hoek. The distorted fore­grounds were recr­eat­ed by sch­olars and their illusion met Verm­eer’s need to isolate his subjects from the viewer.

Vermeer
The Milkmaid, 1658 

Rijksmuseum

Big efforts were made to identify subjects in these works. Vermeer was cl­early a devoted family man, portraying subjects without any sexual ap­peal, including Girl with a Pearl Earr­ing. His most plausible models would have been the often-pregnant Cat­harina, the 2 eldest daught­ers and their maid.

See the Complete Int­er­ac­t­ive Vermeer Catalogue and read Dutch Amsterdam.