International studio (82.1925)

mceRnACionAL

Vermeer of Delft would have
been interested in the Atlantic
voyage of his works. He prob-
ably, {would not willingly have
stuck pins in a map, but he
might have been accessible to
the compliment of a carto-
graphic description of his later
fame. Commenting on the
Czernin Vermeer in Vienna with
its wall map, Mr. Lucas, who
will weary of being quoted, says
that "Vermeer was the first to
see the decorative possibilities
that lie in cartography." That
might mean the uses of a map
in the composition of the inte-
rior walls on which the painter
spent such triumphant pains.
Instances of fine wall maps, in-
truded at a varying rectangular
proportion into the upper right
corner of the canvas, are those
in the Frick painting, "Soldier
and Laughing Girl;" the Hun-
tington, "Lady with a Lute,"
and the Marquand "Woman
with a Water Jug," both in the
"mistress and servant" by jan vermeer Metropolitan; and the Ryks

in the Frick Collection, Neu, York Museum "Woman Reading a

Writing" from the Morgan collection, and the Letter" in Amsterdam. When in such instances

"Lady with a Lute" from the Huntington collec- the interest of the composition is focussed cen-

tion The three now in the Frick collection are trally on the canvas between a pair of figures, the

the "Soldier and Laughing Girl," the "Music horizontal map rectangle is crowded within the

Lesson" and the "Mistress and Servant." In left margin, as in the case of the Czernin map,

1924 the Duveens brought over a "Portrait of a with its twenty views of Dutch towns decorating

Youth," which brings the total for New York to the complete border, or the map of Holland in

eight. Philadelphia's three include, besides the the barer interior of the Frick example. The

Johnson painting, the two in the Widener collec- corner of the Europe map in the Huntington

tion—the "Woman Weighing Gold," brought to painting, with its seated figure truncated by the

light by Dr. de Groot in 1910, and the "Young countering shadow of the almost rectangular table

Girl with Flute" added in 1924. The Boston mass of the lower right, is still predominantly

example is the "Concert" in the late Mrs. Jack horizontal; that of the Amsterdam picture with

Gardiner's collection, which came from the collec- its heavily weighted though standing figure even

tion of the first Vermeer enthusiast, Thore, and more so. The small intruded rectangle in the

in 1892 at the Thore sale in Pans fetched twenty- Marquand painting is unusual in being a vertical

nine thousand francs. Mr. Lucas refers to one of area; the figure here is not only standing but taut

Vermeer's "Geographer" type of paintings as in its laced stays. The disposition of these geo-

being in this country. There is some indication metrical, not to say rectilinear, elements of en-

that it may be a picture which has visited these closed area in the design may be counted part of

shores without taking up a permanent abode; but the decorative possibilities of which the minute

if it is here it would bring the total American surface detail is the feature carrying the more

Vermeers to thirteen out of a grand total, as we obvious but not more undisguised emphasis. Of

have attempted above to reckon them, of thirty- any and all the decorative possibilities in such

nine—or forty, if the Paterson painting in Lon- maps, it would be a leap in the dark to say that

don, "Diana and Her Nymphs," is included. Vermeer had not seen them. But, after all, they

one twenty-four

november i Q 2 $