Emily Mitchell has
written a beautiful critique of the exhibit at the Metropolitan
Museum of the Delft painters and Vermeer, and I wanted to write
a complementary column on my own personal feelings about Vermeer.
To put it simply,
I adore him. He is my favorite painter of them all. Part of
his appeal is the size of his paintings. They are small and
exquisite, rather than huge and overwhelming, like Rembrandt’s
paintings. I love Rembrandt, but I don’t get lost in his paintings
the way I do the Vermeers. There is something so intimate and
personal about his work, and the faces of his subjects are so
expressive that I can easily pretend I know what they are saying
to each other.
I saw the exhibit
at the Met this week, and, while I welcomed the chance to see
so many Vermeers at once, my favorite place to see this painter
is at the Frick Museum at 70th Street and Fifth Avenue in New
York.
The Frick is a little
gem of a museum, once the home of Henry Clay Frick, which still
retains its warmth and intimacy in spite of the magnificent
furniture, rugs, sculpture, and paintings. I love the small
courtyard in the center of the house, where you can sit on marble
benches around the lily pond, listening to taped recordings
of Mr. Frick’s favorite music and dream about living there in
the early part of the 20th century.
The Frick has three
Vermeers: Officer and Laughing Girl; “Mistress and Maid,” and
“Girl Interrupted at her Music.” I am drawn into these paintings,
part of the small, intimate scenes, imagining what these people
are saying to each other, making up stories about their lives,
longing to reach out and touch the soft ermine on the lady in
yellow, the leaded glass in the windows, the diamond-patterned
tile on the floor.
Vermeer’s paintings
almost always focus on a woman. The light falls on her face
as she talks to a lover or her maid, plays the virginal or pours
milk from a pitcher. Often she wears pearls, as part of her
coiffure or as earrings. Each Vermeer has its secrets, its hidden
story, its symbols and wonders. The stories I make up about
these paintings are influenced by a marvelous novel called “The
Girl in the Pearl Earring,” by Tracy Chevalier. In that book,
the little maid is often a model for Vermeer and we see the
master painter through her eyes.
The lady with the
pearls entwined in her hair, wearing a pale yellow velvet jacket
trimmed with the softest of ermine, appears in several of Vermeer’s
paintings and I made up a whole short story about her in my
mind. She is a young married woman in her early thirties, the
wife of a prosperous merchant, trained to entertain her husband’s
clients and run the household to his liking. Blond and pretty,
she has grown bored with her husband and is restless with her
housewifely duties. She tells her husband she wishes to learn
to play the lute and arranges for private lessons with the young
and handsome musician who taught her daughters to play. Soon
she looks forward to his visits and dresses carefully before
each lesson. We see her putting on her pearl necklace in “The
Woman With the Pearl Necklace,” the light from the leaded glass
window illuminating her face, red ribbons tucked into her hair,
the soft yellow of her top casting a glow on her fair skin.
In “Woman With a
Lute,” we see her eagerly awaiting her teacher, seated at a
table, looking out the window in anticipation of his visit.
She is animated, intense, happy, as she waits for him. We have
no painting of her with this young man, but I imagine him standing
behind her, showing her how to hold the lute, how to place her
fingers on the strings. He is close enough to breathe in the
scent of her hair and she can feel his warmth next to her body.
She turns to him. He leans down and kisses her. Then, frightened
by the difference in their social status, he leaves.
The next painting,
“A Lady Writing,” shows our naughty housewife looking out at
us, a sensual half-smile on her lips, still in the yellow gown,
the pearls glistening in her ears. She is writing a letter,
obviously to this young man. “I felt our last lesson was incomplete,”
she writes, smiling again. “I look forward to seeing you on
Wednesday afternoon so that I might learn the rest of the song.”
She calls in her
little maid (I imagine she is the one in the book, The Girl
in the Pearl Earring,” who is far smarter than her station in
life would suggest) and hands her the letter in the painting,
“Mistress and Maid.” This painting is my favorite and it is
hanging in my room so I can see it every morning when I awake.
The lady has her hand on her chin, and I imagine her thinking
as she tells the maid where to take the letter, “Should I be
doing this? Will he be afraid to come again? Maybe I shouldn’t
send it.” But she does, and the reply to her note arrives that
very day. We see her in “The Love Letter,” holding the message
her maid has just brought her. She is seated, holding the lute
on her lap, still wearing her yellow outfit, pearls in her ears.
But her expression is anxious. She is not sure what she has
started and whether she is embarking on something that will
risk her marriage and comfortable life with her boring husband.
What will she do?
The last painting
of the lady in yellow is called “The Guitar Player.” She is
looking up at someone not shown in the painting, with a smile
that could only be for her young lover, her cheeks pink with
the anticipation of what will happen next. And we know, watching
her, that he will make love to her that very afternoon and will
make her happy until she is bored with him and decides to learn
to play the virginal with another musician, or perhaps to paint
watercolors with a young artist at the academy.
You can see that
I am caught up in Vermeer’s paintings as if they were a movie
-- or at least a Lifetime Movie of the Week -- and it is only
this painter who affects me this way.
If I haven’t lost
you, gentle reader, please write and tell me if Vermeer has
a similar effect on you or if I am dotty at last. I depend on
you to set me straight.
