”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 JansonSo 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.
This entry will be out of the ordinary. I wrote GIRL IN HYACINTH BLUE,and somehow it appeared in the wrong place on Goodreads. I can't seem to remove it, so I might as well supply a review.NEW YORK TIMESDecember 19, 1999Picture This: A novel of a haunting painting and its effect on a succession of owners over three centuries. Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreelandby Katy EmckSusan Vreeland's second novel, "Girl in Hyacinth Blue," may be a book about a painting, but it is never content with surfaces. Tracing the influence of one extraordinary picture on a succession of human lives, it touches gently yet thoughtfully on such weighty topics as the immortality of a great artwork and the ways in which art can be used for various ends. In the course of her explorations, Vreeland covers a lot of time and space: "Girl in Hyacinth Blue" begins in present-day America and ends in the 17th century Netherlands, scrolling backward as each chapter accounts for the painting's role in the life of one of its owners.tAmong other things, Vreeland has given us an art detective story, since the early chapters suggest that this marvelous painting--a portrait of a young girl whose face seems to be filled with dreams and longings--may be a lost Vermeer. When we first encounter it, the picture is hidden from view, its possession the dark secret of a lonely mathematician whose father looted it from a Dutch Jewish family that he then sent to die in a concentration camp. Horrified by his father's crimes, he worships the painting with obsessional fervor, fearing that if anyone sees it, the secret of its provenance will come to light. But, as is the way with such things, he also feels compelled to show off his trophy.tThe chapter that displays the mathematician's solitary, guilt-filled pleasure is followed by another that provides a lively view of the close-knit Jewish family from whom the painting was stolen--and particularly of the young daughter who identifies with its subject, a girl just about her own age. This sequence establishes the pattern for the book's structure: each chapter stands on its own, a marvel of economy, yet also builds on the knowledge the reader has already gained.tVreeland is especially good at conveying the tensions that arise among her characters but go largely unspoken. She is also adept at capturing the differing sensibilities of various historical periods, working unobtrusively and successfully avoiding a contrived "period" feel. In the process, she provides her own nicely sketched gallery of portraits: a frivolous Frenchwoman marooned in a loveless marriage in the 19th-century Netherlands; an 18th-century farmer's wife hungering for beauty in the midst of the flat Dutch countryside; and an Enlightenment scientist who embarks on an affair with a superstitious serving girl.tIn all these episodes, the painting is pivotal, both in a practical and a spiritual sense. The aristocratic Frenchwoman hates all things Dutch except the girl in the painting because she recognizes in her a sense of hope that she herself has lost. The farmer's wife loves the same girl because she symbolizes a serene loveliness that is unattainable for people who labor in the fields. In the end, each woman is forced to sell the painting so that each, in her own very different way, can survive. But for each of them, the possession of "Girl in Hyacinth Blue" leads to profound changes.tThis conflict of the spiritual and the practical comes to dominate the final chapters of the novel in which the exigencies of the painter's life are movingly brought to the fore. Like many of its predecessors, the penultimate chapter is filled with a sense of tenderness, of gratitude for the gift of life--a mood that doesn't cloy because it is accompanied by a clear evocation of the daily stresses of loving and living. But the crowning chapter is the final one, which introduces the girl in the picture and provides a glimpse of what is actually going on behind those dreamy eyes.tThroughout "Girl in Hyacinth Blue," Vreeland strikes a pleasant balance between the timeless world of the painting as a work of art and the finite worlds of its possessors and admirers--not to mention the world of its subject and its creator. Intelligent, searching and unusual, the novel is filled with luminous moments; like the painting it describes so well, it has a way of lingering in the reader's mind.Katy Emck is a freelance reviewer based in London.
What do You think about Girl In Hyacinth Blue (2000)?
I like the way this author writes. This is one of those books where an object is the main character, rather than a person. In this case, the object is a (fictional) Vermeer painting of a girl sitting and looking out the window with her sewing in her lap. There are eight interconnected stories that follow the painting back through history to its various owners and how they came to own or sell the painting. Eventually it works back to Vermeer's creation of the painting. My only complaint is that I wish some of the stories would have had more depth. A couple of them end just as you're getting attached to the characters and interested in what will happen next. I especially liked the story From the Personal Papers of Adriaan Kuypers. Sad,(I cried at the end of it), but well told and a little more fleshed out than some of the others.I think it says something for the author that by the end of the book I felt like I could actually see the painting with all its colors and light play.
—Jeanette "Astute Crabbist"
This book had a really interesting premise: it traces a single painting back through time by presenting a story about each of the people who had owned the painting. It's sort of along the lines of Girl with a Pearl Earring except it traces the painting all the way to present day and there is also a mystery about who painted the painting. The story of each owner is a little short story in itself and each one was read by a different author. It's set around Amsterdam and the painting is presumed to
—Kelsey
The book we read last month for book club was The Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland. It was a well-written, thought provoking and inspiring book, but to tell you the truth, I probably would not have finished it if it weren’t for the fact that I was in a book club that keeps me accountable. It’s the perfect example of why I’m in this book club in the first place: to keep me reading things that challenge me a bit, rather than always the easy, thrilling Dan Brown or JK Rowling types. I liked Girl in Hyacinth Blue, not only because it portrays the impact of a single piece of forgotten art in the lives of dramatically different people over several centures; but also for its treatment of the figure in the painting itself: the “girl in hyacinth blue” was the daughter of the Dutch painter Vermeer, and she wondered what people would feel when they looked on her father’s painting, reflecting to herself that “they will never know me.” You can hear her struggling with the question of her worth as a woman, a mere daughter of a then-struggling artist who never himself had time to notice his daughter, except when he studied her academically for her portrait. I feel affinity for this girl because the very element that drew admiration and other passionate feelings for the painting was her expression of deep longing. This longing is a recurring theme in my own art and writing, as it is in so much of the art that is already out there. My question, like hers, and like Vermeer’s no doubt was, has always been, Does the world need another painting? Another novel? Another voice like mine? Might someone out there be moved by my outpouring of my own unfinished heart?Vreeland’s novel attempts to prove that life would be unlivable without the inspiration and beauty of art. And as not everyone appreciates even a Vermeer painting, its worth centuries later is undeniable; so also each work of art, each individual life like mine, has a purpose that will impact generations to come, even if “they will never know me.”
—Adriane Devries
