By any standards this was a collection of incomparable quality, constituting what Graham-Dixon calls “the heart and soul” of Vermeer’s work. That it was in the possession of one family merely adds to the sense of awe. How did they come by such treasure? What, if any, was their connection to the genius who created it?
At the heart of this remarkable story is Vermeer. As Graham-Dixon relates, he was – and by and large remains – an enigmatic figure in art history who for much of his life seems to fade in and out of focus. Indeed, it was not until the nineteenth century that his reputation began to blossom.
Born in 1632, he was one of two children. We do not know where he went to school, though he must have done, or exactly what training he received as an artist and from whom. Thus Graham-Dixon’s book is replete with questions, not all of which, as he would be the first to acknowledge, can easily be answered: “What kind of man was he? What did he believe? What were his political opinions? What was his religious outlook?” These and more Graham-Dixon sets himself the task of solving, but the problem is there is so little concrete evidence to build on. For example, there is not recorded one word Vermeer actually said. This suggests that he lived a largely blameless life, free from interference by civil and religious authority. Shadow-like, he is hard to pin down, not because he was consciously elusive but because he spent his days out of the spotlight. Hence Graham-Dixon’s reliance on terms such as “probably”, “perhaps”, “presumably”, “might” and “likely to have”.
This is not, it should be emphasised, a criticism, merely a statement of fact. But while it is important to underline what we do not know about Vermeer there is also much that can be deduced through intelligent, informed guesswork. That he was admired – even revered – by his contemporaries is clear from a poem, written and published in hometown of Delft in Holland, in which his work was praised. Moreover, he was twice elected head of the painter’s guild in Delft, which leads Graham-Dixon to conclude that he was rated by his peers: “For all the hiddenness of his work, it is plain that some people held his pictures in high regard.”
But if Vermeer’s life was lacking stürm und drang, the same cannot be said of the times in which he lived. War in seventeenth-century Europe and Holland was endemic and enduring. In the days when the mass slaughter of whole populations was not uncommon, the canny Dutch – a mercantile superpower – lived under threat of invasion and worse. Their best defence lay in the low-lying land they had reclaimed from the sea. “Having shaped their environment so profoundly,” writes Graham-Dixon, “they understood well how to defend it.”
Vermeer’s family were not comfortable with conflict. On the contrary, they appear to have aspired to a life of peace, which in turn would inform the painter’s work. His father ran an inn-cum-art dealership in Delft which was a salon of sorts to artists and to people drawn to the Remonstrant movement. This was founded in the first decade of the seventeenth century by Jacobus Arminius, a charismatic figure who argued passionately “in favour of universal tolerance, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience” in an era when religion was at the root of appalling violence. It was a doctrine that appealed not only to Vermeer’s parents but also, crucially, their neighbours, the Van Ruijvens, who, as patrons, would become the recipients of so much of the artist’s oeuvre. For 13 years, from around 1657, Vermeer worked almost exclusively for the Van Ruijvens, after which he “more or less gave up painting altogether”.
Read more
In many books about Vermeer the Van Ruijvens are either conspicuous by their absence or are mentioned merely in passing. Their elevation to critical influencers and formative benefactors is a significant contribution to Vermeer scholarship and, consequently, the story of European art. It would appear that the humble Vermeers and the wealthier Van Ruijvens, subscribing to a secretive sub-sect of Remonstrants called Collegiants, were philosophically, religiously and aesthetically in harmony. Why otherwise would they accept paintings in lieu of payment for loans?
The pictures the Van Ruijvens acquired, notes Graham-Dixon, not only appealed to their taste: “They were to express their deepest convictions, their hopes and their dreams. This was so from the outset of the arrangement to its end.” Significantly, many of Vermeer’s paintings are of young women painted at the behest of the Van Ruijvens. In that sense, we may view them as part of a whole. Were they family members or friends? Here they are reading, sewing, strumming a guitar, writing a letter, or, my favourite, the aforementioned ‘Milkmaid’, in which a woman is depicted pouring milk from a jug into a bowl with the devotion of a priest pouring communion wine. Thus the ordinary is elevated to the sublime.
There is, as Graham-Dixon demonstrates, an intriguing contemporary context but there is, too, timelessness in these everyday acts. The number of Vermeer’s paintings may have been small but the survival of so many of them is testament to the love with which they were created and the love and care they have since been given.
