Old lamps for new

by E. V. Lucas

It is this joyful mastery that fascinates me and made it so natural, when in the autumn of 1907 I was casting about for a motive for a holiday, to say, “Let us pursue this painter, let us see in twenty-one days all the Vermeers that we can.”

The farthest European city containing a Vermeer of which I then knew being Vienna (I afterwards found that Budapest has a putative example), we went there first; and there was a certain propriety in doing so, for in the Vienna picture the artist is supposed to have painted himself, and to begin with a concept of him was interesting and proper. The “Maler,” as it is there called, is at Count Czernin’s, a comfortable mansion at Number 9 Landes-gericht strasse, open to visitors only on Mondays and Thursdays. There are four rooms of pictures, and nothing in them matters very much save the Vermeer. An elderly butler is on duty; he shows you the best place to stand in, brings a chair, and murmurs such facts about the marvellous work as appeal most to his imagination—not so much that it is a miracle of painting as that it was acquired for a mere song, and that Americans constantly walk into this room with blank cheques in their hands and entreat the Count to fill them up at his pleasure. But no, the Count is too proud of his possession. Well, I admire him for it. The picture may not have such radiance as the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin, or such charm as the “Woman Reading a Letter” at the Ryks, or such sheer beauty as the Mauritshuis “Girl’s Head,” but it is brilliant and satisfying. It does not give me such pleasure as certain others, to be named later, but it is in some ways perhaps finer. Vermeer is seated at his easel with his back to the world—a largish man with long hair under a black velvet cap, and the careful costume of a man who can pay for his bread. Nor does the studio suggest poverty. The artist is at work on the head of a demure damsel whom he has posed near the window, with the light falling upon her, of course from the left. The little mousy thing has a wreath of leaves in her hair and a large book held to her breast; in her right hand is a long musical instrument. On the wall is the most fascinating of the many maps that the artist painted—with twenty little views of Dutch towns in the border. Vermeer was the first to see the decorative possibilities that lie in cartography; and he was also, one conjectures, a geographer by inclination.

The beautiful blue Danube had so little water in it just then that the voyage to Budapest would have taken almost twice as long as it should, and there was not time. To make the journey by train, just for one day, was an unbearable thought at that moment; although I now regret that we did not go. The Budapest Vermeer is a portrait, a Dutch Vrouw, standing, looking full at the world, without any accessories whatever. Not having seen it, I can express no opinion as to its authorship, but Dr. de Groot is doubtful, although he reproduces the picture in his book among the practical certainties. So also does M. Vanzype, the most recent of our painter’s critics, whose monograph, “Vermeer de Delft,” in the “Collection des Grands Artistes des Pays-Bas,” was published in 1908. M. Vanzype goes farther, for he also includes the portrait of a young man in the Brussels gallery for which the curator, M. A. J. Wauters, has made out so eloquent a case, but which Herr Bredius and Dr. de Groot both repudiate. For myself, all I can say of it is that one does not jump to the denial of it as one did to the putative example in our National Gallery, just completed by the addition of its lost half. The Budapest Vermeer is in reproduction a beautiful picture—a youngish Dutch woman with the inevitable placidity, but not so open and easy-going as the personalities whom the artist chose for his own pictures: she has folded hands and large white cape and cuffs. M. Vanzype admits that this portrait and that of the young man at Brussels lend colour to the theory of Thoré and M. Arsène Alexandre that Vermeer studied for a while immediately under Rembrandt; but he goes on to show that this was practically an impossibility.

Turning reluctantly away from Budapest, we went next to Dresden, which has two Vermeers and a light and restful hotel, the Bellevue, very agreeable to repose in after our caravanserai at Vienna. The Bellevue is on the bank of the river and close to the Picture Gallery, into which one could therefore drop again and again at off hours. The famous Raphael is of course Dresden’s lodestar, and next come the Correggios, and there is a triptych by Jan Van Eyck and a man in armour by Van Dyck; but it is Vermeer of whom we are talking, and the range of Vermeer cannot be understood at all unless one sees him in the capital of Saxony. For it is here that his “Young Courtesan” (chastely softened by the modest Baedeker into “The Young Connoisseur”) is found. It is a large picture, for him, nearly five feet by four, and it represents a buxom, wanton girl, of a ripe beauty, dressed in a lace cap and hood and a bright yellow bodice, considering the value of the douceur which a roystering Dutchman is offering her. Behind is an old woman curious as to the result, and beside her is another roysterer, whose face might easily be that unseen one of the artist in the Czernin picture, and who is wearing a similar cap and slashed sleeves. The party stands on a balcony, over the railing of which has been flung one of the heavy tapestries on which our painter loved to spend his genius. The picture is remarkable as being a new thing in Vermeer’s career, and indeed a new thing in Dutch art; and it also shows that had Vermeer liked he might have done more with drama, for the faces of the two women are expressive and true; although such was his incorrigible fastidiousness, his preference for the distinguished and radiant to the exclusion of all else, that he cannot make them either ugly or objectionable. The procuress is a Vermeer among procuresses, the courtesan a Vermeer among courtesans. The fascination of the canvas, though totally different from that of any other of his works, is equal in its way to any: it has a large easy power, as well as being a beautiful and daring adventure in colour.

The other Dresden picture is also a little off Vermeer’s usual path. The subject is familiar: the Dutch woman reading a letter by a table, on which is the customary cloth and a dish of apples; the light comes through the same window and falls on the same white wall; but the tone of the work is distinct, sombre green prevailing. It would be thrilling to own this picture, but I do not rank it for allurement or satisfaction with several of the others. It comes with me not even fifth or sixth. Vermeer’s best indeed is so wonderful—the “View of Delft,” the “Girl’s Head” at the Mauritshuis, the “Milkmaid” and “Woman Reading a Letter” at the Ryks, the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin, the “Street in Delft” at the Six Gallery, and the “Young Courtesan” at Dresden—that anything below that standard—such is the fastidiousness which this man’s fastidiousness engenders—quickly disappoints; although the student working up to the best and reaching the best last would be continually enraptured.

Next Berlin. After the “Girl’s Head” at the Mauritshuis, which among the figures comes always first with me, and the “View of Delft,” it is, I think, the Berlin “Necklace” that is Vermeer’s most charming work. I consider the white wall in this painting beautiful beyond the power of words to express. It is so wonderful that if one were to cut out a few square inches of this wall alone and frame it one would have a joy for ever. Franz Hals’ planes of black have never been equalled, but Vermeer’s planes of white seem to me quite as unapproachable. The whole picture has radiance and light and delicacy: painters gasp before it. It has more too: it is steeped in a kind of white magic as the “View of Delft” is steeped in the very radiance of the evening sun. Berlin is to me a rude and materialistic city with officials who have made inattention a fine art, and food that sends one to the “Continental Bradshaw” for trains to Paris; but this picture is leaven enough. It lifts Berlin above serious criticism. I hope that when we have fought Germany in the inevitable war of which the papers are so consistently full, it will be part of the indemnity.

The other Vermeer in the superb gallery over which Dr. Bode presides with such dangerous enthusiasm (dangerous, I mean, to other nations), is not so remarkable; but it is burnt into my memory. That white Delft jug I shall never forget. The woman drinking, with her face seen through the glass as Terburg would have done it (one likes to see painters excelling now and again at each other’s mannerisms); the rich figure of the Dutch gentleman watching her; the room with its chequered floor: all these I can visualize with an effort; but the white Delft jug requires no effort: the retina never loses it. Vermeer, true ever to his native town and home, painted this jug several times. Not so often as Metsu, but with a greater touch. You find it notably again in the King’s example at Windsor Castle.

Berlin has also a private Vermeer which I did not see—Mr. James Simon’s “Mistress and Servant.” Judging by the photogravure, this must be magnificent; and it is peculiar in respect of being almost the only picture in which the painter has a plain table-cloth in place of the usual heavily-patterned tapestry. The lady in ermine and pearls is evidently ordering dinner; the placid, pleasant maid has a hint of Maes. The whole effect seems to be rich and warm. Two other pictures I also ought to have seen before leaving Germany—one at Brunswick and one at Frankfort. In the Brunswick painting a coquettish girl takes a glass of wine from a courteous Dutch gentleman at the table, while a sulky Dutch gentleman glooms in the background. On the table is another of the white Delft jugs. The Frankfort picture is “The Geographer at the Window,” dated 1668, which in the reproduction strikes one as a most beautiful and dignified work, wholly satisfying. The geographer—probably Antony van Leeuwenhoek—leans at his lighted table over a chart, with his compasses in his hand. All the painter’s favourite accessories are here—the heavy tapestry on the table, the window with its small panes, the streaming light of day, the white wall, the chair with its brass-headed nails. And the kind thoughtful face of the geographer makes the whole thing human and humane. Vermeer, I fancy, was never more harmonious than here. I shall certainly go to Frankfort soon to translate this impression into fact.

At Amsterdam we went first to the grave and noiseless mansion of the Six family at Number 511 Heerengracht, one of the most beautiful and reserved of the canals of this city. A ring at the bell brought a rosy and spotless maid to the door, and she left us for a little while in a lobby from which Vermeer might have chosen his pictures’ blue tiles, until a butler led us upstairs to the little gallery. I am writing of 1907, before the negotiations for the purchase by the State of Vermeer’s “Milkmaid” were completed, and we therefore saw it in its natural home, where it had been for two hundred and more years. But now, at a cost of 500,000 florins at twelve to the pound (or at nearly £155 a square inch) it has passed to the Ryks. The price sounds beyond reason; but it is not. Granted that a kind and portly Dutchwoman at work in her kitchen is a subject for a painter, here it is done with such mastery, sympathy, and beauty as not only to hold one spellbound but to be beyond appraisement. No sum is too much for the possession of this unique work—unique not only in Vermeer’s career (so far as we know), but in all painting. What the artist would have asked for it we do not know. At the sale of his works in 1696 it brought 175 florins.

Vermeer here is at his most vigorous and powerful. His other works are notable above everything for charm: such a picture as the “Pearl Necklace” at Berlin represents the ecstasy of perfection in paint; but here we find strength too. I never saw a woman more firmly set upon canvas: I never saw a bodice that was so surely filled with a broad and beating bosom. Only a very great man could so paint that quiet capable face. Some large pictures are very little, and some small pictures are large. This “Milkmaid” by Vermeer is only eighteen inches by fifteen, but it is to all intents and purposes a full length: on no life-size canvas could a more real and living woman be painted. When you are at Amsterdam you cannot give this picture too much attention; be sure to notice also the painting of the hood and the drawing of the still life, especially the jug and the bowl. It was this picture, one feels, that shone before the dear Chardin, all his life, as a star.