LETTER PAINTINGS BY VERMEER

A GIRL READING AN OPEN LETTER BY AN OPEN WINDOW

"Vermeer's genius was in probing those moments in life when one feels alone and immersed in one's thoughts. His are essentially private works, invitations to pause and partake of the quiet intimacy of the scene. Almost as in poetry, he suggests moods and attitudes in his figures that are recognizable yet not precisely defined. In this painting a girl stands in a corner of a room before an open window, her thoughts are totally absorbed in the letter she is reading. The walls, curtains, and table define the physical limits of her space; the reflection of her image in the glass emphasizes the inner nature of her thoughts. Her world is still."
Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Jan Vermeer, 1981

THE LOVE LETTER

We are looking in at an apparently quiet scene where the maid delivers a letter to her mistress, but in fact the painting is a boiling emotional turmoil: the mistress is in love with one who is not her husband, and the maid knows all about it. The two are exchanging glances even before the letter is opened: each knows that it is the sender, not the contents, which is significant. Vermeer exploited this theme elsewhere, in Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid. The curtain and the containing walls make us feel like spies, watching a private moment.
On the floor next to the mistress is a laundry basket and some embroidery work, and in the doorway is a broom, representing her neglected wifely duties. Instead, the mistress has been playing music, a symbol for thoughts of love. Behind her is a painting of boats moving fast before a wind, with an open sky in view, representing her state of mind; next to her is a fireplace, symbolizing the passion of love, and painted thereon is a lion rampant -- her lover, the letter writer.
The composition is based on contrast between foreground and background, to concentrate our attention on the figures. The foreground is dark, softly painted, and somewhat indistinct, while the background is well-lit and precisely delineated. This later Vermeer shows an elegant, perhaps opulent interior, in comparison to the more sparse rooms of the earlier paintings. The mistress is dressed in the ermine-fringed yellow outfit in which so many of Vermeer's women are dressed.

A LADY WRITING

Critic Mariett Westermann points out that in 17th c. there was a sudden and unprecedented increase in first person statements in the Dutch Republic. Private diaries, journals, soul-searching poems, private letters and not the least, self portraits were avidly practiced. Reading and writing have in common the capacity of independent though associated with not only men but for the first time with the women who pose in Vermeer’s painting. Letters in Dutch genre painting, featuring both men and women reading and writing them, were often associated with love. Vermeer most likely drew this theme, as usual, from the well established iconographic tradition. The artist seems to have been alert to the appearance of a new type of woman, better educated than her predecessors and more absorbed in her interior life. Letter writing had also an important practical role in the mercantile Dutch Republic which had expanded itself commercially to the four corners of the world. An efficient postal system for local mail had developed in those times with standard fairs and delivery schedules.

This still life painting of a foreshortened viol da gmaba by an anonymous artist may have been the one in Vermeer’s death inventory described as a ‘a bass viol with skull’. The skulll is not a visible due, perhaps, to the poor state of conservation of this area of Vermeer’s composition. Such still-lifes were part of a momento mori or vanitas tradition popular in the 17th c. Netherlands. Vermeer may have intended it as an admonition on the young woman’s vain and flighty pastime: letter writing. Critic Peter Sutton states that the tradition of letters being associated with vanity and transitory pleasure was well established in the genre painting of the time. However, the self—aware smile of the young letter writer and the profoundly serene atmosphere which pervades this picture seems to be at odds with such an interpretation. Vermeer included at least two other paintings in his own compositions that most likely belonged to his mother-in-law Maria Thins, a procuress by Baburen and a Roman Charity by the same.

there is a whole genre in dutch paintings dedicated to letter writing. more information on his paintings available at: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/index.html