VERMEER AND MUSIC: THE ART OF LOVE AND LEISURE
In this wonderful film we join Tim Marlow in an exploration of the enchanting, fascinating world of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) in an exhibition that has just closed at the National Gallery in London.
It is a comparatively small but delightful exhibition looking at Vermeer’s life, his paintings showing musical instruments and how this links in with the life of the era. Several rare instruments are displayed and a concert is shown (performed and filmed at Handel House by the Academy of Ancient Music).
The National Gallery has chosen to focus on Vermeer’s relationship with music. Some of the paintings are minutely analysed in the movie. For example, we see what could possibly be Vermeer’s finger prints and some of his paintbrush bristles left in the painting . Were works painted over and frames reused?
Curated by Marjorie E. Wieseman who along with Tracey Chevalier ( the author of Girl With a Pearl Earring ) is interviewed by Marlow, the exhibition is a luminous display about Vermeer, his life and works and the central part music played. It is interesting to learn that while Vermeer is regarded as one of the major artists of the ‘Dutch Golden Age’ we do not really know that much at all about him. Works by other artists are also included and analysed to put Vermeer in context .We learn about his life in Delft and the economic and political struggles of the time.
For the first time the National Gallery’s two paintings by Vermeer, A Young Woman standing at a Virginal and A Young Woman seated at a Virginal are brought together with Vermeer’s Guitar Player, which was on loan from the Iveagh Bequest, Kenwood House. Combined with The Music Lesson (The Royal Collection) and Young Woman seated at a Virginal (private collection), they form the centrepiece of the exhibition.
Music was one of the most popular themes in Dutch painting, and carried many diverse associations. In portraits, a musical instrument or songbook might perhaps indicate the education or social position of the sitter; in scenes of everyday life, it might act as a metaphor for harmony, or a symbol of transience. There are more instruments in the art of the Dutch golden age than practically any other. Vermeer, a star of that era, and of this show, left only an estimated 36 paintings but 12 of them invoke music in some form.
The exhibition displays 17th-century virginals (a type of harpsichord), guitars and lutes alongside the paintings to offer unique insights into the painters’ choice of instruments, and the difference between the real instruments and what was painted. Across the four galleries of the exhibition we are led from still lifes – with musical notation and instruments as an allegory of the transience of life – to scenes of boisterous gatherings, contrasted with music lessons where, because they offered one of the few occasions when unmarried young men and women could be together, the atmosphere can be intimate and flirtatious.
In the new Dutch Republic, members of musical clubs often met in each other’s houses once or even twice a week. A concert was not a passive experience, it didn’t mean sitting and listening so much as being actively involved and participating. In Gerard Ter Borch’s domestic scene the woman playing the two- headed lute is highly accomplished: we can tell by the position of the hands and the complex fingering. At a party painted by Jan Olis, the music is performed on transverse flute, violin and huge viola da gamba, while a singer struggles to follow the score.
The position of women in society and the spread of the development and use of the harpsichord and guitar among other instruments are examined. Also included is Carel Fabritius’s hauntingly mysterious ‘A View of Delft’ with its bowed perspective .The cobbled streets swerve away from the eye, a curve repeated in the lute leaning against a wall beside a melancholy man lurking in the shadows. If you look closely you will see he has perhaps been trying to sell it; the scene is painfully silent and poignant.
By focusing on music, the show presents a close-up of Dutch culture. We learn about the fashion for tables covered in Persian carpets, and/ or for yellow satin house-jackets trimmed with white fur, for inscribing and decorating scenes inside the lids of clavichords, for inscribing instruments with mottoes about the fleeting brevity of life, for pictures within pictures within pictures. Vermeer’s use of light and reflection is analysed as well. The texture and feel of the clothes, drapery, and rugs, as conveyed in the paintings, is remarkable.
Art lovers will hugely enjoy exploring Vermeer’s work in close up and in thrilling HD detail. The exhibition itself was held at the National Gallery in London 26 June – 8 September 2013. Running time 90 mins (approx) no interval. The film screened at selected arthouse cinemas on October 10 and on various other dates. For further information visit www.sharmillfilms.com.au, and www.exhibitiononscreen.com.