The Young Vermeer Three paintings do not, ordinarily, an exhibition make. With most painters, that might seem a little ungenerous; Johannes Vermeer is an exception. One of the most loved masters of the Dutch Golden Age, Vermeer worked slowly and died young, leaving behind only 36 known paintings. Compare that with the 600 left by his prolific contemporary, Rembrandt, and it’s easy to see why three Vermeers are worth getting excited about. History can tell us very little about the painter from Delft. His father was an innkeeper and art dealer – two complementary professions in those days, as art sales were often held in pubs. We don’t know where Vermeer got his training, but he probably learned much from the paintings passing through his father’s hands. On his father’s death, the 20-year old artist took over the family businesses. Within a year, Vermeer married Catharina, a young Catholic whose mother disapproved of her marriage to a Protestant. He registered as a master painter at 21, in the local artists’ guild. Of his 15 children, 4 died young, and on his death at 43, only one had come of age. Catharina was left with 10 mouths to feed, and crippling debts. She was forced to sell off her husband’s remaining paintings, and was stuck in legal wrangles, even with her own mother, over his debts. History soon forgot Vermeer, and his paintings were often attributed to other artists, including the now obscure Vermeers of Utrecht and Haarlem. It wasn’t until Victorian times that Vermeer of Delft was rediscovered by one dedicated connoisseur, and became a cause célèbre. The Vermeer that we all know and love fits a particular mould. Typically, a young lady stands or sits in quiet contemplation before a gently glowing window. She occupies a domestic interior which, even if sumptuously decorated, suggests a certain humble modesty. She is usually engrossed in a task or a letter, and the whole painting conveys an aura of perfect, harmonious calm. But that’s not quite what you’ll find in the National Galleries’ new exhibition, The Young Vermeer. Before Vermeer hit upon his winning formula, he made three more unusual paintings which have had scholars scratching their heads for years. Painted in Vermeer’s early twenties, they are the experiments of a young artist still trying to find his direction. Although they contain the seeds of his mature work – that compositional harmony, the subtle lighting, and the heavy tranquillity – they are odd in many other ways. Larger than his later works, they portray dramatic subject matter in a style heavily influenced by Italian painting as well as by more local Flemish and Dutch masters. And this from an artist who probably never travelled beyond Amsterdam. The early part of Vermeer’s career has been the subject of heated debate over the years, as scholars try to piece together the jigsaw. Connoisseurs, desperate to discover a new Vermeer, have found the greatest scope for creative thinking in that unpredictable, early stage of the artist’s development. Some of that thinking was just too creative. Five new paintings discovered in the 1930s turned out to be fresh forgeries. As recently as 1986, another Vermeer was discovered, and then quietly dropped. But the attributions of the three in this exhibition have survived intact, offering unique insights into the development of one of the world’s favourite painters. Diana And Her Nymphs, on loan from The Hague, is Vermeer’s only history painting, dealing with a mythological subject. While the theme, for others, provided an excuse for much nudity and action, Vermeer’s band of nymphs is fully clothed and remarkably subdued. They don’t even look each other in the eye. The shady figure at the rear, clutching her front, might be the pregnant Callisto, but there is none of the dramatic dénouement found in other paintings; only quiet concentration. This is an ambitious canvas for the young Vermeer, and there are places where you can see him struggle; the back of one seated figure is strangely extended, and his only known attempt at a live animal – the dog in the corner – is rather indistinct. But that careful pictorial harmony is already present, in the artist’s first foray as a professional painter. Perhaps a year later, Vermeer painted Christ In The House Of Mary And Martha, now in the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland (one of only 17 galleries in the world to own a Vermeer). This is the artist’s largest painting, and his only biblical one, possibly related to his conversion to Catholicism. Christ stops at the house of two sisters, and while Martha bustles about, she is irritated that her sister just sits and listens at Christ’s feet. Christ defends Mary’s attention to her spiritual needs over her material ones. Painters routinely turned to this subject as an excuse for detailing all manner of kitchen paraphernalia and food, but Vermeer effectively put Christ’s message into practice, making the picture one of serene simplicity. The strikingly broad brushwork echoes that of Flemish master Anthony Van Dyck, while the gestures and theatrical lighting suggest the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, devotees of the sensuous Italian painter Caravaggio. The last of the three paintings is on loan from Dresden. The Procuress is signed and dated 1656, three years after Vermeer’s registration with the painters’ guild. For the first time, he entered the realm of genre painting, where everyday people are going about their business. This brothel scene – emphasizing the financial element of the transaction – would later be referred to euphemistically as a “merry company”. The shadowy figure on the far left is, for me, the most enthralling. In old-fashioned clothes, holding a cittern in one hand and raising a glass to us in the other, he plays the role of narrator. This is the classic set-up for a sneaky self-portrait. We have no idea what Vermeer looked like, but this could well be our one and only chance to look him in the eye.
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