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”She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father’s, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms�� lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.��


Johannes Vermeer self-portrait cropped from his painting The Procuress (1656).

Johannes Vermeer or Van Der Meer was a 17th century Dutch painter who had a modestly successful career. He would have been more successful, made more money, enjoyed a certain level of comfort if only��

he would paint faster.

He did not paint until the mood struck him, commissions were bothersome, rarely of interest. His life was about light and how to capture that light perfectly for all eternity in the pigment of his paint. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few of his paintings in museums across Europe. Every time I’m struck by each and every poetic brush stroke he made to the luminosity of natural light seemingly only to be able to be perceived by the eye of Vermeer in the city of Delft.

He traded paintings for food, for shoes for his children, for debts that accumulated as he pondered the subject for his next painting.


The Concert by Vermeer...absconded with.

There are sixty-six potential Vermeer’s in the world, but only thirty-four are universally recognized as accredited Johannes Vermeer paintings. In 1990 The Concert was stolen from a museum in Boston and has never been recovered. Valued in the neighborhood of $200,000,000 it is the most valuable unrecovered painting in history. We can hope that it landed in the hands of a collector, who is selfishly hoarding it hopefully in a climate controlled environment. Someday the collector will die and the painting will reemerge.

We can hope.


The Astronomer was seized by the Nazis in 1940 from the de Rothschild’s family. It was returned to the family after the war, but was given to the French government in payment for back taxes in 1983. It now hangs in the Louvre. On the back of the painting there is a black ink Swastika.

This brings me to the subject of this book. Susan Vreeland begins by introducing us to Cornelius Engelbrecht who has decided to reveal after many years of hiding the existence of the painting, a Vermeer, to his friend and art lover Richard.

It can’t be...it can’t be a Vermeer.

There are numerous problems in regards to this painting. Provenance, that all important paperwork establishing authenticity, has been lost or separated from the work. The other major problem is how Cornelius’s father obtained possession of the work. Germany, 1940s, opportunities abounded for artwork and other precious things of value to fall into the hands of the less than scrupulous. There are still families trying to get back artwork that was confiscated by the Germans or stolen by opportunists and sold to collectors/museums all over the world.

”Look. Look at her eye. Like a Pearl.��


The Girl in Hyacinth Blue painted by Jonathan Janson

So what is this painting? It is of Magdalena Vermeer, daughter of the painter. The one most like him. The one with sewing shoved into her hands when her fingers ached for the brushes.

”She loved him, loved what he did with that hand, and even, she suspected, loved what he loved, though they had never spoken of it. When that thought lifted her face to his, she saw his cheeks grow softer, as if he noticed her in the house for the first time.��

It was hard for anyone to get his attention, especially a young girl who was loved most when not disruptive to his brooding thoughts.

Vreeland begins the book with Cornelius and then steadily takes us back in time with the painting. The people that swirl around the painting are brought to life and the influence of having something so beautiful gracing their lives shows the greedy need we all have to possess something so alluring. One of my favorite stories is of a poor family trying to save their farm from a flood and in the midst of this conflict a baby is laid in their boat along with the painting with instructions to sell the artwork to feed the baby. The painting becomes a source of tension between the husband and wife. The wife doing anything she can to keep it. The husband, thinking of the winters to come, knows the money from selling it will allow him to expand his breeding stock which will better insure the family's long term survival. The wife becomes rebellious, but her mother sets her straight.

”Work is love made plain, whether man’s or woman’s work, and you’re a fool if you can’t recognize it. The child’s the blessing, Saskia, not the painting.��

When she does finally sell the painting I could feel the pain of the loss as acutely as does Saskia. There is nothing she will ever be able to buy for the rest of her life that will replace the vibrancy of a Vermeer painting. She does leave her mark on the painting because she names it and she passes that name to the buyer.

Morningshine.

In the later chapters we even meet Vermeer as he struggles with creditors and subjects for art that will inspire him to lift his brush. We meet the mutinous Magdalena as she struggles against the forces trying to make her learn the skills that will make her a valuable housewife. How can you mend when you must create? In the final chapter we see her meeting her painting once again. She borrows every scrap of money she can to try and buy it when it comes up for auction, but paintings like that aren’t supposed to be owned by normal people, not even a person who has the blood of the painter cycling through her own heart.

It is always so ironic to think of painters giving away paintings for a loaf of bread and a few decades/centuries later those same works of art becoming worth inconceivable amounts of money.

The book gets better and better as we walk back through history with Vreeland. The later chapters are stellar, poignant, and captivating. They lift the book from a three star to a four star. The author put me in the same room as Vermeer, so much so I could almost see the light the way he saw it.


Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window by Vermeer.