Old lamps for new

by E. V. Lucas

Of the other London Vermeers two (only two!) belong to Mr. Otto Beit. One of these is a tiny “Lady seated at a Spinet,” not in the first rank of fascination, but a little masterpiece nevertheless, and the other, “A Lady Writing a Letter,” notable for the strong and beautiful painting of the lady’s face, foreshortened as she bends over her task. Beside her stands her blue-aproned maid, waiting to take the missive to the door. The table has its usual tapestry and the wall its picture, this time an old master. But the head of the lady is what one remembers—with her white cap and her pearl drops and her happy prosperous countenance.

Mr. Beit’s Vermeers are in Belgrave Square: there is another in Hyde Park Gardens, the property of Mrs. Joseph: “The Soldier and the Laughing Girl” it is called. The girl sits at the table with a bright and merry face; the soldier, who has borrowed his red from Peter de Hooch, is in the shade; on the wall is a splendid rugged map of Holland and West Friesland. The picture is paintier than is usual with Vermeer, but very powerful and rich. Mrs. Joseph (I am told) has been forced by the importunities of collectors and dealers to have recourse to a printed refusal to sell this work!

The Vermeer belonging to the King hangs in the private apartments at Windsor, but when I saw it, it was, by the courtesy of His Majesty’s Surveyor of Works of Art, carried into a less sacred room of that vast and imposing fortress for us to look upon. The Court was absent, and workmen were here and there, but one could have told that this was the abode of a monarch, even had one been blindfolded. There was a hush! On a walk of some miles (as it seemed) through dusky passages in which now and then one saw dimly one’s face in a slip of a mirror at the corners, we passed other creatures who had some of the outward semblance of human beings; but we were not deceived. They were marked also by a discretion, an authority, beyond ordinary mortality; not the rose, of course, but so near it that one flushed. To have this new experience, for I had never entered a royal castle before, and be on a visit to a Vermeer, was a double privilege. The Vermeer is very charming, but not one of the first rank; and its coating of varnish does not improve it. But it is from the perfect hand none the less, and there is the white Delft jug in it for the eye to return to, like a haven, after every voyage over the canvas.

England also has Vermeer’s “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary,” which, when it was exhibited in Bond Street some few years ago, divided the experts, but is now, although not confidently, given to our painter by Dr. de Groot. This picture, which I have not seen, has in the reproduction much of the large easy confidence of the “Diana and her Nymphs” at the Hague. It hangs now in Skelmorlie Castle, and some day I hope to blow a blast outside those Scottish walls and succeed in getting the drawbridge lowered that I may look upon it.

There are nine examples in America to-day (1911). Of these Dr. de Groot reproduces only six, for the other three have come to light since he published. The six which he gives are—Mr. B. Altman’s “Woman Asleep” (from the Rodolph Kann Collection), Mr. James G. Johnson’s “Lady with the Mandoline,” Mrs. Jack Gardner’s “Three Musicians,” Mr. H. C. Frick’s “Singing Lesson,” Mr. Pierpont Morgan’s “Lady with Flute,” and “The Woman with the Water Jug,” in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Of these I have seen only Mr. Morgan’s, described above. The three new ones are Mr. Morgan’s “Lady Writing,” Mrs. Huntington’s “Lady with Lute,” and Mr. Widener’s “Lady Weighing Pearls” (or gold), which was exhibited in London early in 1911, and which brings Dr. de Groot’s list to thirty-seven. This new Vermeer is not absolutely his best; it is not so great and simple and strong as “The Milkmaid,” at the Ryks; it is not so radiant as “The Pearl Necklace,” at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin; it is not so exquisite and miraculous a counterfeit of life as the “Girl’s Head,” at the Mauritshuis; nor so enchanting and epoch-making as the “View of Delft,” in the same gallery. Those I take to be the artist’s four finest pictures. But it is well in his first dozen, and it is vastly better than either of those in the National Gallery.

The new picture represents a woman: one of those placid domestic creatures to whom Vermeer’s brush lent a radiance only a gleam of which many a Madonna of the Southern masters would have envied. How little can they have thought, these Delft housewives and maidens, that they were destined for such an immortality! She stands beside a table, as most of Vermeer’s women do, and she has a jacket of dark-blue velvet trimmed with fur, and a white handkerchief over her head. The tablecloth also is blue; the curtain is orange. Standing there, she poises in her right hand a pair of goldsmith’s scales. On the table is a profusion of pearls (painted with less miraculous dexterity than usual), and a tapestry rug has been tossed there too. Behind her placid, comely head, on the wall (where Vermeer usually places a map), a picture of the Last Judgment hangs, which may or may not be identifiable. (I should doubt if Vermeer introduced it with any ironical intention; that was not his way.) This picture is on a light grey wall. The light comes, of course, from the left, and never did this master of light paint it—or educe it—more wonderfully. It triumphs through the window and curtain exactly as in “The Pearl Necklace,” past the same black mirror. The woman’s face, however, has the greatest lustre; from it is diffused a lambency of such beauty that one might almost say that the rest of the picture matters nothing; such a soft and lovely glow were enough. The work is not signed, except with the signature of immanent personality.

Since the discovery of this picture—No. 36—yet another has been found—a large group of children representing Diana and her nymphs—which Mr. Paterson of Old Bond Street—the discoverer of “Christ in the House of Martha and Mary”—has in his possession. Mr. Paterson is a true Vermeer enthusiast, and not one of those with whom the wish is the father to the thought. His new Vermeer is obviously an early work and is on a larger scale than any of the others: it has weaknesses of drawing and in more than one respect suggests an experimental stage; but one cannot doubt its authorship, and everywhere it is interesting, and here and there exquisite, especially in the figure of the child in the left-hand corner. With this picture the list of practically unquestionable Vermeers reaches thirty-eight.

There remain the one or two on the border-line of authenticity at which I have glanced, and also a signed landscape in the possession of Mr. Newton Robinson. This, if genuine (as I do not doubt), is Vermeer’s only woodland scene, with the exception of those on the walls of other of his pictures, such as that in the National Gallery, for example. It is a soft brown landscape, as little like Vermeer as possible in the mass. But in the detail—particularly in one detail—the signature is corroborated. In the foreground is a little arbour with some young people in it holding a musical party. The most prominent figure is a girl crowned with flowers: and this girl is sheer Vermeer in attitude, in charm, and in technique. The work is, I should guess, juvenile and experimental, but it has many attractions and is of the deepest interest as the thirty-ninth opus on the side of certainty.

Vermeer’s practically unquestionable output thus totals thirty-nine pictures. Think of the smallness of the harvest. Thirty-nine! That is to say, hardly more for Vermeer’s whole career than the Boningtons to be seen in a single London collection—that at Hertford House—where there are thirty-five of his works. And Bonington died at the age of twenty-seven. How many pictures by Bonington exist I know not, but hundreds, I suppose, in all. And Vermeer has only thirty-nine to his name, and lived nearly twice as long, and had eight children to support.

The question that confronts us, the question to which all these remarks of mine have been leading, then, is, Where are the others? Because there must have been others; indeed we know of a few, as I will presently show; but there must have been many others, since Vermeer began to paint when he was young, and painted till the end, and had a working period of, say, twenty-four years—between 1652, when he was twenty, and 1676, when he died. At the modest rate of only four pictures a year this would give him a total of ninety-six pictures, or nearly sixty more than we know of. But putting his output at a lower rate—say at two pictures a year—that would leave us with several still to discover. Of the existence at one time of two if not more of these we have absolute knowledge, gained from the catalogue of the Vermeer sale in Amsterdam in 1696, which I copy from M. Vanzype’s pages, together with the prices that they made and his commentary:—