International studio (82.1925)

V

mceRDAUoriAL

A LADY WEIGHING GOLD Courtesy oj Joseph E. Widener BY JAN VERMEER

pathetic with the impulse to define the results of course, fared badly too, as did Jacob Ruysdael.

topographic surveys on deftly engraved copper Jan Steen kept an inn. De Hooch was a bailiff,

plates. Hobbema collected taxes. Goyen sold old pictures

We need not compare the lettering on the maps and tulips. Adrien van de Velde dealt in linens,

with the reproduced print, legible under the lens, Jan van de Capelle, who had a dye shop, was rich

of Gerhard Dou's books. Dou's prices only were enough to paint sky and water instead of doing

higher than Vermeer's, but Dou was the best paid ship portraits for ship owners. When Vermeer

painter of his day (1613-1675), while Vermeer was still a pupil of Rembrandt's pupil, Karel

apparently was one of the least successful. Not Fabritius, killed in the powder explosion which

to invite the comparison, but to sharpen the point almost ruined Delft in 1654, the Dutch with a

a bit, we might think of Dou's paintings them- universal carrying trade were touching the peak

selves as maps—maps of faces, maps of costume, of commercial prosperity. In 1696, when the

decorated with the emblems of household ware; artistic energies of France were recovering from

and if so they partook, perhaps, of the vogue, the concerted effort on Versailles, and London,

Vermeer's work, in that case, would sink to the recovered from the great fire, was about to open

level of a lover of maps, yet an amateur possessed the choir of Wren's new St. Paul's, twenty-one

of the skill and temperament fit to celebrate the Vermeers were sold at auction at Amsterdam for

beauty of their decorative possibilities. From the the aggregate sum of 1,467 florins. This third sale

point of view of the indulgent and too little com- had been preceded by a dealer's sale of twenty-six

mended baker, to whom dying Vermeer was at Haarlem in 1677, and an estate sale of nineteen

indebted in the sum of 3,176 florins, the painter's at Delft in 1682. At the Amsterdam sale the

mistake was perhaps that, instead of serving the "Woman Weighing Gold" (now in the Widener

vogue itself, he delighted in an accidental effect collection, Philadelphia) fetched 155 florins; the

of it to which the good burghers were oblivious. "Lady Playing the Guitar" (now in the Johnson

There is a hint of truth here which could be collection, Philadelphia), 70 florins; the "Soldier

the whole story only if Vermeer alone had been with Laughing Girl" (now in the Frick collection,

unappreciated. But Hals and Rembrandt, of New York), 44)4 florins.

one tiventy-eigbt

NOVEMBER I Q 2 5