Old lamps for new

by E. V. Lucas

“The View of Delft [No. 13], if it has no replica, is the picture in the Museum at the Hague, for which 2900 fls. was paid at the Stinstra sale in 1822.

“The House at Delft [No. 14] is the Ruelle of the Six collection.

“The Young woman writing [No. 16] is without doubt the picture in the Beit collection in London. This was in the Héris sale at Brussels in 1857.

“The Young woman adorning herself [No. 17] is The Pearl Necklace in the Berlin Museum.

“The Young woman at the harpsichord [No. 18] is either the picture in the National Gallery or that in the Beit collection, or perhaps that in the Salting collection [now also at the National Gallery].

“It is believed that the portrait in ancient costume [No. 19] is the portrait of the young girl in the Museum at the Hague [my frontispiece].

“[Nos. 20 and 21.] Finally, since at the Hendrik Borgh sale in 1720 one Astrologer and its pendant were sold for 160 fls.; and since two Astrologers and a pendant were sold at the Neyman sale in 1797 for 270 and 132 fls., it may be deduced that the pendants of the 1696 sale are either the two Geographers which belong at the present day to the Museum at Frankfort and to M. Du Bus de Gisegnies at Brussels; or one only of these and M. Alphonse de Rothschild’s Astronomer.”

To these remarks of M. Vanzype may be added that No. 1 is the picture recently exhibited in London and now in Mr. Widener’s collection, and No. 3 is probably the Czernin picture. No. 9 might be the Brunswick painting. This leaves us only with two of the Amsterdam sale pictures to discover—No. 5, A nobleman in his room, and No. 15, View of several houses. But, of course, certain others which M. Vanzype and I think we have traced may be wholly different. M. Vanzype furthermore remarks: “Other pictures have at certain times been heard of and have since disappeared, notably the ‘Dévideuse’ discussed in 1865 by Bürger and an English connoisseur, which was then in England, but of which no trace has since been found.”

Among the thirty-nine that are known, although there are many interiors such as the painter loved, there is, remember, only one woodland scene, only one pure landscape, only one religious subject, only one real portrait, only one street scene, only one kitchen scene, only one purely classical subject, only one family scene. The isolation of these examples fills one with a kind of fury. No painter, and especially no painter with such an interest in the difficulties of his art, such a painter’s painter, so to speak, as Vermeer, and moreover a man with eight children and a clamorous baker—no painter paints only one landscape, especially when the result is so commandingly successful as the “View of Delft.” Where are the others? (M. Vanzype has found a replica, but it is not generally accepted.) No painter is satisfied with one attempt at a beautiful façade. Where are the others? (We know there was one other.) No painter paints only one classical subject. Where are the others? (Mr. Paterson’s example is only half-classical: classical with a domestic flavour: a family scene in masquerade, to be exact.) No painter paints only one religious subject. Where are the others? No painter paints only one portrait pure and simple as distinguished from portrait and genre. M. Vanzype, it is true, claims to have found another; but that would make only two. How indeed would he be allowed to paint no others, when he was Vermeer of Delft and lived in an age of Dutch prosperity and Dutch interest in art? Where are the others? Do you see how one feels—how maddening it is that these bare forty are all, when one knows that there must have been many more?

Vermeer may, of course, have himself destroyed some, as Claude Monet recently destroyed a number of his. But I do not think so; he could not have afforded to, and he was not that kind. No: they still exist somewhere. And the question where are they brings us back to the wealth of Mr. Pierpont Morgan, for which I was wishing at the beginning of this essay. With it I would furnish expeditions not to discover the Poles north and south, because I care nothing for them; not to conquer the air, because I love too much to feel my feet on this green earth; not to break banks or to finance companies; not to kill the gentle giraffe for America’s museums; but simply to hunt among the byways of Northern Europe in the hope of coming upon another work by that exquisite Delft hand. That is how I would spend my money; and incidentally what charming adventures one would have, and what subsidiary treasure one would gather! That would be an expedition worth making, even if the prime object of the search always eluded us.