Flying Fox

Like it or not, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is in for another lengthy hike. This time, she’s back to Japan.

On 27 October, 2009, the directors of the Mauritshuis and media company Asahi Shimbun have agreed to organize a traveling exhibition of major works of art from the Mauritshuis in 2012. It is anticipated that over forty works from The Hague will be exhibited in Tokyo and subsequently in Kobe. Amongst the works included are well-known paintings, such as the Girl with a Pearl Earring by Vermeer and the late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt.

The museum will tour a selection of its rich collection during the renovation of the historic building known as the Mauritshuis. This extensive renovation requires the closure of the museum for the public. The View of Delft will remain at the Mauritshuis.

Regarding the upcoming Art of Painting special exhibition in Vienna (25 January – 25 April 2010), I have been kindly informed that the organisers have created a 1:1  3D reconstruction of Vermeer’s masterpiece following the drawings of the London architect and Vermeer/camera obscura expert, Philip Steadman.  A large camera obscura was subsequently employed to obtain  images. Some photos of the camera obscura images  will be included in the exhibition.

Most any Vermeer enthusiast will remember Steadman’s carefully-researched and much-discussed book (Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces) on Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura (a sort of 17th-century precursor of the modern photographic camera). The dust still has not completely settled  dividing Vermeer notables into two camps. Since The Art of Painting is said by many to present some of the peculiar visual qualities which are characteristic of the image produced by the camera obscura, this part of the exhibition may be useful to those who those who seek visual evidence in regards to the issue.

I have always enjoyed, but more importantly,  learned, something more from small-scale exhibitions with a clear focus more than blockbuster overviews which tend to overwhelm someone like myself who can at best absorb one painting at at time (perhaps a professional deformation stemming from the habit of painting only one painting at a time) .  See,  for example,  the excellent  Milkmaid exhibit currently at the MET.

The Art of Painting exhibit seems to be shaping  up nicely. All I need now is some some cash that falls off a tree for a round-trip ticket and lodging.

The Young Vermeer

The Hague, Mauritshuis
May 12 – Aug 22, 2010

Dresden, Old Masters Picture Gallery
Sept 3– Dec 28, 2010

Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland
end of 2010 – Feb. 2011

Although Vermeer’s art has been consecrated by numerous special exhibitions for decades, until now, no single exhibition has focused on the myriad questions of painter’s artistic formation and early works. Hence, The Young Vermeer, which will travel from The Hague to Edinburgh and lastly to Dresden, will be the first chance to view Vermeer’s formative early works in close proximity and shall no doubt will be a milestone in Vermeer studies. All three venues feature Vermeer’s Diana and her Companions, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and The Procuress. These three works have been completely restored so they can be appreciated in all their youthful intensity. The Dresden venue will also comprise their Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window.

An exhibition catalogue will provide visitors with in-depth investigation to this subject by distinguished experts of Dutch art.

The Dresden venue of the exhibition seems to be particularly rich. An ambitious educational project, based on recent investigations of the Dresden Vermeer Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window will include a full-scale, scientifically elaborated reconstruction of the room represented in this early masterpiece. The reconstruction will to be presented to the public next week. A website, currently under construction but already rather promising, will further explore Vermeer’s masterpiece.

Moreover, the educational project includes a 20-minute film which focused on the early Vermeer paintings and the Dresden paintings (The Procuress and Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window).  Numerous lectures during are planned as well as an anthology, comprehending short literary texts by different authors dealing with the Girl  Reading a Letter by an Open Window.

Due to its uniqueness, the Young Vermeer exhibition has already begun to stir international attention assuring widespread interest. As details come available, they will be reported on the Flying Fox.

Vermeer : The Art of Painting
25 January – 25 April 2010
Kunsthistorisches Museum
Maria Theresien-Platz, Vienna

http://www.khm.at/en/kunsthistorisches-museum/exhibitions/kommende-sonderausstellungen/vermeer/

The Art of Painting has a unique place in Vermeer’s oeuvre. Although it was very likely not executed as a commission, it never left the artist’s studio. Even after Vermeer’s death, which left his family with enormous financial problems, his widow Catharina tried to prevent a sale of this precious painting. Most likely, it was made as a showcase piece to be presented to connoisseurs and potential customers. The exhibition investigates a number of facets of this most complex of Vermeer’s compositions.

Besides extensive technological studies regarding the work’s state of conservation,  several central subjects are faced including the complex iconography  supported by period documentation. Some of the props in the picture will be on display; a period chandelier, tapestry, wallmap as well as a precise reconstruction of a slashed doublet worn by the painter.

Other questions are investigated as well. Does the painting represent Vermeer’s real studio? What does the painting reveal about Vermeer’s working methods? Which pigments did painter utilized? How was the composition developed? Did the painter make use of optical devices?

Numerous loans from European and American museums and private collections and historical documents from Dutch archives provide a springboard for discovering Vermeer’s masterpiece.

In addition the Kunsthistorisches Museum displays paintings, sculptures and details of films by contemporary artists (George Deem, Maria Lassnig, Peter Greenaway etc.) whose creation were inspired by Vermeer’s Art of Painting.

Have you seen Vermeer Milkmaid at the MET? Then why not share your impressions, thoughts, questions and comments  here?

Vermeer’s Masterpiece The Milkmaid
September 10, 2009–November 29, 2009

Not that I vilify large-scale art exhibitions, but small, though-out exhibitions with a sharp focus generally stick more with me. So when the MET announced that Vermeer’s Milkmaid would be the central piece of a special exhibition, I knew luck found me. Chance has it I will be in NY during the Milkmaid’s New York sojourn having already made plans to attend an opening of a show of my watercolors in a Manhattan gallery.

Along with the Milkmaid, five Vermeers of the MET permanent collection will be on display plus a few keys works to help clarify the exhibition’s point (three more are housed at the Frick a few blocks away). Anyone affected by Vermeer and who lives within a reasonable distance will not pass up this opportunity.

Museum goers will be in good hands: the exhibition is curated by Walter Liedtke who, as few,  has channeled so much productive energy into making sense of Vermeer’s 36 extant works and bits and scraps of historical information. Accompanying the show is a booklet (by Liedtke) which takes a rather original look at a remarkable picture.

Liedtke also discusses the artist’s unique patronage and its influence on the artistic and psychological aesthetic of the Milkmaid and other works by Vermeer on a MET  podcast.

Visitors’ comments are very welcomed.

See my interactive study of the Milkmaid here.

The Night Sky in the Age of Vermeer: The Astronomer in Context
Saturday, August 8, 2009—Sunday, January 10, 2010
Gallery 344

This exhibition is scheduled to coincide with The Louvre and the Masterpiece and the important loan to the MIA of Vermeer’s Astronomer from Paris. The Night Sky will bring visitors into the scientific and cultural world of the 17th-century astronomer through a focused examination of the prints, books, scientific instruments, and other objects that Vermeer depicted in his intriguing and breathtakingly beautiful painting.

Digital reproduction of 317 known paintings, 285 etchings and more than 100 drawings of Rembrandt van Rijn go on display next week at the former Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

Ernst van de Wetering, a leading Rembrandt scholar who supervised the project, said that the exhibition, unique in its kind, will offer viewers “a walk through Rembrandt’s mind.” All works will be reproduced in their original size and shown chronologically. He argues that the reproductions have the advantage of stripping away the aura of awe viewers often have when they see an original, which hinders their assessment of the work.

If that is not enough, some have been digitally enhanced by Van de Wetering himself, hoping to restore the color and detail they had when they left Rembrandt’s studio nearly 400 years ago.

Here, one may see Van der Wetering’s point and one may miss it entirely. Perhaps it’s a matter of assuming a realistic point of view. Without splitting hairs, the exhibit is at least (or cynically, at most) a very good and very big Rembrandt unfolded art book.

Being a painter, I am pretty well trained to look at paintings, so if aura is there, I assume it is produced by the inner workings of the painting  itself and not for other reasons. And again being a painter, the virtual restoration part leaves me puzzled. I accept age and decay as well as the aging and decaying of paintings. One may reasonably suspect Rembrandt did too.

“The Complete Rembrandt, Life Size”
the former Amsterdam Stock Eschange, Amsterdam
July 5 – Sept. 7. 2009

Following even Vermeer matters little know to the general public, Pieter Groenewegen’s Mountain Landscape with Travelers has been temporarily loaned by the Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder Gallery (Amsterdam) to the Prinsenhof-Museum, Delft.

Although you may not associate Groenewegen’s rather conventional landscapes with the sublime masterpieces of Vermeer, Vermeer evidently found Groenewegen’s Mountain Landscape with Travelers sufficiently intriguing to incorporate not once, but twice in his Lady Standing at the Virginals. To be fair, the word intriguing should be reserved to Vermeer’s pictorial sleigh of hand rather than to landscape itself. Here is the story in a pill.

Some years ago, Dr Gregor J. M. Weber (Head of the Department of Fine Arts in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) noted that the landscapes which appear on the lid of the virginal and in the gilt frame on the background wall of A Lady Standing at the Virginals showed remarkable similarities. Other than the overall composition, the succession light and dark layers of rocks and trees, the roofs of the houses and the waterfalls of two landscapes were virtually identical. Weber concluded that they were both based on the same painting.

Although many Dutch landscape painters composed their works along these lines, Weber noted a much greater similarity with the work of Pieter Groenewegen from Delft and concluded that the work must have been by him. By coincidence, Weber saw a photograph of Groenewege’s Mountain Landscape with Traveler and informed the two Amsterdam art dealers, John and Willem Jan Hoogstader, of his finding who were amazed when they discovered they were the owners of the very picture in question.

Using computer montage, Weber further analyzed the two depictions in Vermeer’s painting in reference to the real Groenewegen. And although it was evident that Vermeer had used some poetic license in adapting Groenewegen’s landscape to his expressive exigencies, the coincidences were so compelling that the swept away any reasonable doubt of Weber’s original conjecture.

What remains to be understood is the scope of Vermeer’s pictorial trickery. Personally, I have a hunch that the two landscapes were meant to deliberately “echo” each other in order to create a visual analogy to the musical theme which is at the heart of Vermeer’s composition. Visual “echos,” some obvious and some more subtle, seem to be a standard tool in Vermeer’s pictorial repertoire. One example is the curling locks of the youthful Guitar Player which closely well echo the dangling foliage of the landscape behind her. Another is the snow-white cap of the maid and the billowing clouds of the landscape behind her in the Love Letter.

If you would like to dig further into the matter, the Hoogsteder & Hoogsteder has published Weber’s findings with copious diagrams and images in the Hoosteder Journal No 7, Sept, 2000. If you contact them they may send you a free copy. Some information, without images, can be found at < http://www.hoogsteder.com/publications/journals/journal-7/discovered>.

Vermeer’s Masterpiece,”The Milkmaid”
Sept. 10 -Nov. 29, 2009
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Just out is Carol Vogel’s NYT report of Vermeer’s Milkmaid coming to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in September, 2009.

Although no blockbuster exhibition is planned for her arrival be warned, the humble, but most majestic of all maids is sure enough to draw important crowds.  So now, in one swoop, Vermeer both serious enthusiasts and the curious can take in 6 Vermeer paintings (the MET already has 5) at one time, walk a few blocks down to the Frick and see three more.

That’s about ¼ of the Delft Master’s surviving output.

The only other loan will be a drawing by Dutch artist Jacob Backer, Woman With a Jug, from about 1645.

The Dutch Golden Age: From Rembrandt to Vermeer
October 7, 2009 – February 7, 2010
Pinacothèque de Paris

Like it or not, some important Vermeer paintings are doing pretty impressive legwork. Seeing they are all over the place, if you are planning Vermeer–related travel then please consult the Flying Fox Vermeer Tracker page to avoid being let down. Here is the latest update.

The Pinacothèque de Paris will host an exhibition will put on an outstanding Dutch works of art, an ensemble of over one hundred and thirty pieces, including about sixty paintings, thirty graphic works, ten etchings as well as ten objects to give an ample representation of carved ivories, tapestries, china, wooden miniatures, silverware, glassworks and furnishings.

Vermeer’s late little Love Letter, will be on display.

One of the paybacks of 9+ years of making the Essential Vermeer website is the constant influx of correspondence. Scholars and specialists inform me of their thoughts and writings, museums directors about their exhibitions and web initiatives. I receive suggestions, constructive criticism, books, articles and even proposals for collaboration from all over the globe.

Alongside public figures, there are people whose names I did not know who generously express their opinions and raise questions on about every facet of Vermeer and web publishing one could imagine. They send me images of their own paintings or a dusty canvas found in the attic hoping it’s  a Vermeer, posters, postcards, poetry and every now and then, a donation to keep the site going and growing.

The other day, a friend of the Essential Vermeer, Drew, established an absolute first.  After some email correspondence about his Vermeer travels and the newly attributed Young Woman Seated at a Virginal which just popped up at the MET, Drew went to view the work directly. He  pulled out his iPhone, snapped a digital photo and emailed it to me as he was standing in front of the painting.

Sometimes I wonder.

What would Vermeer have said about someone blasting an iPhone image of his painting instantaneously from one part of the globe to another he had never met? How would have he reacted if he new some of his 36 surviving works fly on jumbo-jets over oceans, mountain ranges and the Siberian tundra to be ogled by thousands of viewers who spend hours in line at exhibitions dedicated to his art in places called museums?  What would have he though if he could thumb through the lavish, band-new Vermeer: The Complete Paintings written by Vermeer specialist Walter Liedtke?

In my opinion Vermeer would have taken in all the technology with an wide, wide grin.  He would have loved the stuff. And he would have been delighted although sometimes puzzled at what has been written about himself and his work. Perhaps he would have needed a bit more time to comprehend how many people on the earth are knit together by his tiny canvases.

The Rijksmuseum has developed a webspecial to flank their temporary exhibition of Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance normally housed at the NGA.  It briefly investigates 3 aspects of Vermeer’s painting with comparative details of the Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum), Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (Rijksmuseum) and the Woman Holding a Balance (NGA). This special is nothing special, mind you, even though it might  interest those who tip their  toes into the water for the first time.

Lest one be disappointed at a missed chance (the code and text of the project must not have required more than a few hours to put together) visitors should remember that the Rijksmuseum offers a great deal when compared with other museums which house Vermeer paintings, especially, if you know where to dig. The quality digital scans of the museums’s holdings plus the depth of collection information can be daunting. Compare for example, the digital scans of the two Vermeers in the London National Gallery which cannot be downloaded by the viewer and bear unsightly watermarks capable of souring even the staunchest Vermeer devotee.

No doubt, the best part of this special are the downloadable images readily accessible on the press release page. In particular, the hi-resolution image Woman Holding a Balance is so accurate in color and exposition that it easily betters any printed image I have ever seen, a digital gem of sorts. The shot of the exhibition installation with the Milkmaid, Woman Holding a Balance and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is moving (see  image above photo: Jeroen Swolfs) if one recalls the time the Milkmaid and Woman Holding a Balance were hung together in Amsterdam in 1696 (see the post on the exhibition below).

Following the Rijksmuseum’s policy, the downloads are free for everyone and require no sworn oaths or bureaucratic sign-ups. Their heart is in the right place.

webspecial:
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/vermeer?lang=en

press release and images of the paintings on display:
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/pers/tentoonstellingen/vermeer?lang=en

Writer, art historian and friend of the Flying Fox, Jonathan Lopez, wrote in recently…

Woman Holding a Balance
11 March to 1 June 2009
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Vermeer’s Milkmaid and Woman Holding a Balance will be temporarily reunited in Amsterdam after 300 years. Vermeer devotees will recall that these two paintings were auctioned off there to the same buyer at the Dissius sale of 21 Vermeer paintings in 1696, 21 years after the artist had died.

Both works achieved handsome sums, 175 and 155 guilders respectively, inferior only to the much larger View of Delft at 200. Let’s remember that the average Dutch worker’s wage was something like 500 to 700 guilders per year.

The man who was willing to pay the price, Isaac Roooleuw, a Mennonite merchant, clearly knew what he was getting. He was a painter. However, Roooleuw enjoyed them very little since five years later he was forced to sell them by foreclosure, each to a different buyer.

Although these works are divergent in theme and technique and were made years apart, I can’t think of a more revealing couple in all of Vermeer’s oeuvre. The Milkmaid is the personification of earthly sunlight. The Woman Holding a Balance, on the other hand, possesses a moon-like splendor that when observed directly, eclipses even it own complicated allegorical structure. The viewer has the sensation that it is possible to physically penetrate the space of picture’s crystal-clear penumbra had it not been for the sacral figure of the young woman who waits for her scales to  balance.

I do hope that they will be displayed in close proximity.

Vermeer and Van Meegeren: The Real and the Faux
Jonathan Lopez, author of The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren, and Ronni Baer, William and Ann Elfers Senior Curator European Paintings

Wed, Feb 25, 7 pm
Remis Auditorium

Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren became a folk hero at the end of World War II when he confessed to selling a fake Vermeer to Hermann Goering. Author Jonathan Lopez and curator Ronni Baer discuss the extravagantly sordid life of the world’s most notorious art forger and what he did to the image of the Vermeer we know and love.

Book signing follows.

Vermeer, Fabritius & De Hooch: Three Masterpieces from Delft
Feb. 14 – May 24, 2009

Recently some noted museums are taking to small, in-focus exhibitions.

This tiny, but exceptionally focused display sets side by side three master painters of the Delft School: Carel Fabritius, Pieter de Hoogh and Johannes Vermeer.

Fabritius’s interest in illusionism is highlighted in his painting The Goldfinch, one of the fascinating pictures of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Its startling simplicity of figure against the stark white ground has often been seen as a possible starting point for Vermeer’s Woman with a Pearl Necklace.

The Goldfinch will be hung alongside Pieter de Hoogh’s Courtyard of a House in Delft, a far more complex work from the collection of The National Gallery, London. De Hoogh was one of the most delightfully innovative painters of genre interiors and probable source of inspiration for many of Vermeer’s own works.

Complementing these two works will be the Gallery’s own masterpiece, Vermeer’s Woman Writing a Letter with her Maid.

Its not every day that one discovers a portrait of Rembrandt. But now, not one, but four previously unknown images of Rembrandt’s face in works by Jan Lievens have been identified by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., curator of northern baroque painting at the National Gallery of Art.  Wheelock said he became “vaguely conscious” that it was Rembrandt’s likeness with the artist’s puffy jowls and famous bulbous nose while he was doing research for an exhibition on Lievens soon opening at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Although it is well known that Rembrandt and Lievens had shared ideals and experiences in the first years of their careers, this discovery sheds new light on the intimate side of their relationship.  According to Wheelock, it is Rembrandt who sits in the center of Lievens’  The Cardplayers (detail lower left) making it earliest known image of Rembrandt, just 17 years old. Rembrandt’s features can also be made out in Lievens’ Lute Player (detail upper left).

Although  considered in his own age a child prodigy, art  history has been less kind to Jan Lievens than Rembrandt.  During his adolescence, Lievens’ works were sought by princely patrons in The Hague and London before he reached the age twenty-five. But with the stellar rise in Rembrandt’s fame as the greatest artist of the Dutch golden age, Lievens’ own artistic reputation inexorably declined. This exhibition affords an overview of Lievens’ life and art drawing much needed attention to this neglected master. The catalogue essay argues that in many respects Lievens was the initiator of the stylistic and thematic developments that characterized both artists’ work in the late 1620s.

Jan Lievens: A Dutch Master Rediscovered runs February 7 to April 26 at the Milwaukee Art Museum. See the excellent website dedicated to this spectacular exhibition.

With the usual hoopla Google has launched a virtual tour of the Prado Museum in Madrid that enables visitors to closely examine 14 of its masterpieces on their computers monitors. A Google spokesman said: “The paintings have been photographed in very high resolution and contain as many as 14,000 million pixels (14 gigapixels).

“With this high level resolution you are able to see fine details such as the tiny bee on a flower in The Three Graces (by Rubens), delicate tears on the faces of the figures in The Descent from the Cross (by Roger van der Weyden) and complex figures in The Garden of Earthly Delights (by Bosch).”

While broadening the access to digital images of art works is welcomed news, it remains to be seen what real need this initiative may ultimately fulfill. What is Google’s commitment to art other than drumming up one-time novel seekers and sprinkling their brand with a bit of highbrow culture? Personal experience has shown me that museum goers rarely spend more than a few seconds per painting as they “do” the gallery and with special exhibitions it is not uncommon that visitors spend more time reading the accompanying brochure than looking at the objects on display.