An Exhibition of Three Vermeer Paintings at Frick Collection

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Mary Tompkins Lewis, Forever Yours, Johanne Vermeer, The Frick Collection highlights the artist's paintings of epistolary romance. Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2025, at page A13. https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture ... collection-e204f9f5

--------------WSJ
New York

Currently ensconced in the Frick Collection’s new Ronald S. Lauder Exhibition Galleries, “Vermeer’s Love Letters” is an intimate installation of three staggeringly beautiful works by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer (1632-75), and the first loan show to be presented in the recently restored museum, which reopened on April 17. Organized by guest curator Robert Fucci from the University of Amsterdam, it heralds the magnificent possibilities the Frick’s reconfigured spaces allow.

A large text panel at the show’s entry introduces us to the beguiling, epistolary theme that captured Vermeer’s imagination. Among some three-dozen surviving paintings that can be securely attributed to him, six offer variations of the subject. In each, an impeccably attired young woman, pictured in a richly appointed interior, reads, writes or receives letters, which, as telling details imply, are likely missives exchanged with—or intended for—an amorous admirer. The three works on view, which date to Vermeer’s late career, also include depictions of maidservants, who figure in their formal compositions and enigmatic narratives. Splendidly installed in a single gallery, the paintings invite us to unravel their hidden stories and revel in their incomparable artistic mastery.

“The Love Letter” (c. 1669-70, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam), the smallest canvas in the exhibition at about 17 by 15 inches, allows the viewer a furtive glimpse into the serenely ordered, cloistered domain of women so perfectly chronicled in Vermeer’s art. A diamond-patterned path of black and veined white marble tiles traces its deep, perspectival space, which is framed by a soil-stained wall at left, a black broom propped up at right, and a theatrical, tapestried curtain above. Espied through a darkened passageway that leads to a brilliantly illuminated chamber beyond, its seated protagonist—whose large pearl earring (probably glass) glimmers at the exact center of the composition—has paused while playing a cittern, a stringed instrument popular in Vermeer’s day. She tentatively accepts a small note from her maid, who seems to have acted as intermediary with an unseen suitor as was the custom in polite Dutch society. Glancing quizzically toward her presumed confidante, the young woman appears uncertain as to its contents, while the servant, identified by her trademark blue apron, smiles reassuringly—her lips slightly parted as if speaking about the message she has just delivered.

As in many of Vermeer’s works (and those of his contemporaries) depicting women engaged in musical pursuits, “The Love Letter” may explore the theme of music making as a metaphor for courtship, and the hopes of a future harmony or “duet,” a prospect seemingly promised by the tranquil seascape that hangs on the back wall. Such pictures-within-pictures, conceived as puzzles for the viewer, figure frequently in Vermeer’s work, and add layers of ambiguity and narrative intrigue to their decorous subjects. In works such as this, they underscore the intimacy of a world we can experience only at a remove.

The Frick Collection’s larger “Mistress and Maid” (c. 1664-67) allows us to more closely engage with its subjects. A painted green curtain once covered the composition’s rear wall but has darkened over time, so that the highly expressive, almost life-size figures seem to exist in a shallow, stage-like space. Vermeer’s elegant young woman, garbed in the lemon yellow, fur-trimmed mantle he would also depict in the Rijksmuseum canvas, offers a breathtaking study in feminine reticence and timidity, her lost profile shielding her private emotions from the viewer and her ever-so-delicate pose capturing her pensive demeanor.

The painter’s unusually soft brushwork here seems marvelously attuned to his image, while also revealing his fascination with scintillating optical effects. The tiny speck of light on the maid’s open lips, the blurred circle of white dots of pigment that stands in for a pearl necklace, the reflection of the room’s luminous windows in the shiny silver inkpots—all are virtuoso touches not to be missed as one falls under the spell of Vermeer’s unique brand of naturalism that would captivate such 19th-century artists as Edouard Manet, Paul Cezanne and a fellow Dutchman, Vincent van Gogh. Unlike many of his peers, who depended upon a wealth of meticulously rendered details in their works, Vermeer employed a pictorial vocabulary that involved a complex array of effects and approaches, rendering astonishing, and highly original, illusions of reality. “Mistress and Maid”—the third Vermeer canvas to be acquired by the museum’s founder, the industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick (two others hang near the museum’s grand staircase), and the last work of art he purchased—is the peerless centerpiece of the show.

“Woman Writing a Letter With Her Maid” (c. 1670-72, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin) takes a different tack, portraying its subject energetically engaged in writing as her maidservant patiently gazes out a light-filled, mullioned window. A curiously crumpled paper cover, a broken red seal, and a stick of sealing wax on the floor point to haste and an underlying story, but we are left to fill in the blanks. Painted only shortly before he died in penury at age 43, Vermeer’s last essay on this endlessly appealing theme would be used by his wife, Catharina Bolnes—with whom he shared 11 children— to settle a bill with a local baker. In this splendid show, it offers not only an escape from the times we live in, but food for more serious thought.