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Nine episodes in the life of Vermeer: ​​the painter of his city

2023-02-19T06:18:40.890Z


FIGARO HORS-SÉRIE (6/9) - Around 1660-1661, leaving aside his favorite themes, he escaped from the intimate universe of his studio to immortalize Delft.


This article is taken from the

Figaro Hors-série Vermeer, painting silence

.

In this special issue, discover the Dutch Golden Age, the life and work of the Delft prodigy, on the occasion of the largest retrospective ever organized on Vermeer, at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.



Vermeer seems to have spent most of his life in his studio (

The Art of Painting

).

It is in his studio that he meticulously observes and analyzes daily reality, it is there that he dissects light and its facets.

This workshop is found in all his works.

He is there in quiet presence, like a lamp with a shade.

He sets the mood, provides the decor and sets the scene.


But, twice, the artist escaped from it, to create his two unique landscapes.

Not landscapes like those of Albert Cuyp, Claes Pietersz.

Berchem, Jacob Van Ruisdael, Jan Van der Heyden or those of Meindert Hobbema.

Vermeer executed two urban landscapes, one of which, the

View of Delft

(circa 1660-1661), did the most, Marcel Proust helping, for the posthumous glory of the painter.

Vermeer captures the breath of an apparition fleeing towards watercolor blues.

As time passes, Delft emerges from its night, offers itself warm, fruity, nuanced, to the viewer in a wide panorama, taken from the south, on the bank of the Schie which flows towards Rotterdam.

The clock on the gable of the large building on the left reads 7:10 a.m. It is morning.

We see the sun rising, while it dissolves, from the right, on the steeples, the towers, the roofs and the walls of the city.

Under the dusting of the raking light, the city becomes enchantment, decoration, immaterial promise: the morning clarity unites, in a quiet fervor, with the clarity of the water.

Read alsoMichel de Jaeghere: “Vermeer, deceptive sun”

The silent beauty that gently filters through this urban landscape is held in this air and water light that skilfully organizes a game of echoes, transparencies, symmetries between the elements that support each other, respond to each other, until to the permanent slide from the real to the unreal, from the lived to the dreamed, from the objective to the subjective.


We remember the famous pages of

La Prisonnière

, where Marcel Proust recounts the death of the writer Bergotte, struck down on seeing the View of Delft.

This episode is the personal transposition of a malaise that struck Proust.

The writer and art critic Jean-Louis Vaudoyer said that one day in 1921 he accompanied the author of

A la recherche du temps perdu

at the Tennis Court Museum to see the “Dutch Exhibition”.

In this retrospective, Rembrandt triumphed by the number of paintings.

There were only three Vermeers.

As Proust approached it, he was suddenly seized with a violent attack of asthma just as he was admiring the

“little piece of yellow wall”

in the

View of Delft

.


Vermeer must have worked for a long time on this canvas, where he deploys all his virtuosity and his mastery of pictorial techniques: glazes, impastos, flat colors follow one another.

But few, very few shadows cast.


The wet scintillation of each element of the composition, carrying its own light, the density, the haunting tranquility permeating everything, the immobility of the characters and the boats at the quay on the mirror of the waters, make up this landscape, fixed and absolute. , where seconds and time are swallowed up.

Bewitched, Marcel Proust saw the morning dawn for the first time.


In his first landscape,

La Ruelle (circa 1658-1659), the signature,

i VMeer

, can be clearly seen

on the white wall above the bench, on the far left of the painting.

The specialists immediately sought to identify the group of red brick houses, which could be Vlamingstraat 40-42.


Here, Vermeer creates this urban landscape with the same taste for flat geometry, finely nuanced between light and dark hues.

The painter brings this composition to life with four very small characters: a woman sewing on the threshold of the house;

two children playing;

and, standing in the alley, another woman leaning over a barrel in which she plunges her hands.

Next to her, the inevitable broom.

Here slumbers a melancholy full of grace.


It seems that this subject was prized by painters, since it is found in Pieter De Hooch.

But Vermeer is the only one who can create this haunting clarity that daylight does not.

Where painting suddenly tears its shroud.

Vermeer, painting silence

164 pages, €13.90, available on newsstands and on

Le Figaro Store

.

The Girl Reading a Letter in Front of an Open Window

, by Vermeer, c.1657-1658 Dresden, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

SEE

ALSO

- Vermeer exhibition: the retrospective of the century

Source: lefigaro

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