JAN VERMEER

BORN 1632: DIED 1675

FEW things are more unaccountable in the history of art," writes Sir Walter Armstrong, "than the vicissitudes which have attended the renown of the fascinating painter, Jan Vermeer of Delft. Famous in his lifetime, filling honored posts in his native city, accepted as a leader by his fellow-artists, and as the maker of desirable pictures by those who had money in their pockets, an almost complete oblivion seems to have overtaken him before he had been fifty years in his grave.

In 1667, when Vermeer was no more than thirty-five years of age, he was named in Dirk van Bleijswijck's elaborate description of Delft as an artist who did honor to the city; Arnold de Bon, Bleijswijck's editor, celebrated him in verse as one of those who could console his fellow-townsmen for the loss of the painter Karel Fabritius; and yet Arnold Houbiaken, in that 'Great Theater of the Netherlandish Painters' published in 1718, in which he was kind to so many insignificant personalities, passes over Vermeer in silence, and sets an example which was followed by every one who wrote on Dutch art for something like a century and a half.

"It is humiliating to have to confess that, in all probability, the total neglect of a great artist was due to nothing in the world but this omission of his name by Houbraken, and yet Vermeer's pictures were there to proclaim his value. Many, no doubt, were given to others, especially to Pieter de Hooch; but enough were left to show that a great master had gone under, and was waiting for some one with wit and energy to pull him up."

No one appeared, however, to undertake the task until about fifty years ago, when E. J. T. Thore, a celebrated French critic, better known by his pseudonym "W. Burger," struck by the beauty of Vermeer's pictures and fascinated by their seductive charm, constituted himself the long neglected painter's champion, and devoted much time and study to the revindication of his fame. The various public and private galleries of Europe were now searched for examples of Vermeer's art, and although Burger sometimes claimed for his favorite painter pictures which it has since been proved were not his work, it should always be remembered that it is owing to this French writer's enthusiasm and zeal that one of the greatest of the Dutch masters was rescued from the oblivion into which he had so strangely fallen.

In his attempts to ascertain facts concerning the life of Vermeer "the Sphinx," as he called him, Burger met with but scant success, and it was not until after his death that through the researches of M. Henry Havard, who carefully examined the parish registers and archives of the town of Delft, as well as the record-book of the painters' Gild of St. Luke, the meager information that we have of the artist's life was learned.

Jan, or Johannes, Vermeer (pronounced Yahn Fair-mair) was born at Delft, Holland, in October, 1632. His name is frequently written "Van der Meer," of which, indeed, Vermeer is only a contraction; but as the latter is the form in which the name was written during the painter's lifetime, and the way in which he himself signed it in the record-book of the painters' Gild of St. Luke, it has been adopted here. In whatever way it be written, however, the words "of Delft" are usually suffixed, in order to distinguish the painter from others of the same name, by no means an uncommon one in Holland, from Jan Vermeer, or Van der Meer, of Utrecht, and from the two Vermeers, or Van der Meers, of Haarlem.

Of the parentage of Jan Vermeer of Delft we know only that his father, Reynier Janszoon Vermeer, was a citizen of Delft, belonging to the bourgeoisie, or middle class; that his motherwas Dingnum Balthasars ("the daughter of Balthasar"); that the house they lived in was in the Vlamingstraet of Delft; and that his mother died a widow, and was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) of the town on February 13, 1670.

From whom Jan Vermeer received his instruction in art has been the subject of much speculation. At the time of his probable apprenticeship, Delft was rich in painters of more or less note, among whom was one Leonard Bramer, presumably a relative of Vermeer's and a somewhat showy artist, who, M. Henry Havard is inclined to think, was Vermeer's earliest master, although no evidence of such a connection is to be traced in the two men's works.

Burger's belief that the Delft painter at one period of his career studied under Rembrandt, whose influence he notes principally in Vermeer's only dated work, a painting of life-sized figures, now in the Dresden Gallery, cannot be substantiated, especially as there is no evidence that Vermeer ever lived in Amsterdam, or came into personal contact with Rembrandt, but every probability, indeed, that his whole life was spent in his native Delft.

The artist to whom Vermeer shows himself most nearly akin is undoubtedly Pieter de Hooch, his senior by only two years. In spite of some technical differences in their work, there is sufficient similarity to suggest that an intimate connection may have existed between the two painters after De Hooch's establishment in Delft in 1655; and it has been thought that the two young artists may both have received instruction from one and the same source from a painter of Amsterdam and a pupil of the great Rembrandt, who in 1652 settled in Delft. This painter, Karel Fabritius, is, indeed, generally regarded as the master of Jan Vermeer. Rich, well-born, talented, and with all the prestige which life in the great city of Amsterdam, and intimacy with the leading artists of the day assembled there, gave him, Fabritius quickly acquired fame in the city of his adoption, and it may well be that Jan Vermeer became a pupil of so prominent a painter, or at any rate that he was influenced by him.

When in the year 1654 occurred the tragic death of Karel Fabritius, who, while painting in his own house, was killed by the explosion of a powdermagazine, Jan Vermeer, then twenty-two years of age, was already a fully fledged and independent artist, inscribed on the books of the Gild of St. Luke at Delft as a master. That he was at this time poor is evidenced by the fact that when admitted to the gild he was obliged to pay by instalments the modest sum of six florins incumbent upon him as the son of a bourgeois in becoming a member of the society; and that it was fully three years before he found himself in a position to make the final payment.

Poverty, however, had not deterred Vermeer from marrying, and the same year in which he attained to the distinction of membership in the painters' gild, that is in 1653, when only twenty-one, we find it recorded that he was married to Catharina Bolenes, a young woman of Delft.

In 1662 Vermeer was elected to the honorable position of "Hooftmann," or dean, of the Gild of St. Luke at Delft, an honor which was again conferred upon him in 1670. This fact alone would prove that he had acquired a certain celebrity, and it is interesting to find in the journal of a French traveler and art lover of that day, Balthasar de Monconys, further testimony of his established fame. This writer records that when visiting Delft in August, 1663, he saw the painter Vermeer, whose vogue was then so great that he had no works of his own in his studio, and that to see one of his pictures Monsieur de Monconys was obliged to go to the house of a baker who possessed a single figure painted by Vermeer, for which the owner had paid no less a sum than six hundred livres, equivalent to about one hundred and fifty dollars, a large amount in those days.

Vermeer's circumstances had evidently undergone a change, and his prosperity is further shown in the picture which he painted of himself in his studio, now in the Czernin Gallery, Vienna. This, the only authentic representation of the artist that exists, shows him richly attired and at work in a well-appointed room in no way suggestive of the straitened means which had necessitated the payment by instalments of his fee of admission to the Gild of St. Luke, of which later he became one of the leading members.

In the full tide of his success, however, we find Vermeer's death recorded in the registers of Delft. Under what circumstances it occurred is not related; we know only that it took place in December, 1675, when he was but fortythree years of age, that he left a family of eight children, and that he was buried in the Oude Kerk (Old Church) of his native town of Delft.