An inspiring lesson in how lowly snapshots became high art
Exhibition Masters of the Everyday: Dutch Artists in the Age of Vermeer
The Queen’s Gallery
The most famous Dutch picture in the Royal Collection is Vermeer’s The Music Lesson, in which a woman plays a luxurious keyboard called a virginal on the far side of a marble-tiled room, while a man wearing a sash sings by her side.
Like a jet-set celebrity, this enigmatic picture is forever travelling and in demand. Now it is a star of
Masters of the Everyday, a ravishing new exhibition boasting 28 “genre scenes” (art-history speak for scenes of everyday life).
It was not always so popular, though. In the early 19th century, people found Vermeer’s surprising composition “awkward” and “tasteless”, since it privileged an inanimate carpet-covered table in the foreground, while shoving the human drama just beyond our grasp, so that it eluded immediate intelligibility. Yet today, regarding The Music
Lesson, we marvel at Vermeer’s skill and self-command, which upended expectations by refusing to embellish every last millimetre of his canvas with descriptive detail. Isn’t that strange?
During the 17th century, however, the alpha male among the artists on display at the Queen’s Gallery was not Vermeer, but Rembrandt’s talented apprentice Gerrit Dou, renowned for his immaculate workmanship.
Dou’s Girl Chopping Onions (1646) is a tiny tour de force that demonstrates his refined technique. A servant girl chopping onions looks out at us as though we have just interrupted her task. Light from a window to the left illuminates the scene, which contains all manner of bravura detail, including a dead partridge hanging upside down, an empty birdcage, and an elaborate jug lying on its side.
Like so many of the pictures in this exhibition, this one can be “read” in a number of ways. In this case, the empty birdcage may symbolise the girl’s lost virginity – a reading supported by the presence of the partridge (the Dutch word vogelen, meaning “to catch birds”, was also slang for having sex), as well as the onions, which in the 17th century were held to be an aphrodisiac.
It is clever to pack so much sly nuance into such a little panel – but, today, the picture’s charisma stems from Dou’s meticulous brushwork. This artist is also represented by
The Young Mother (1658). There are various parallels between Dou’s two compositions. In the later picture, we find another golden-haired girl looking up from her work, as well as an identical jug, more misshapen vegetables in the foreground, and light flooding in from a window to the left.
Yet now we have moved from the erotic intrigue of the “downstairs” world of the kitchen, into the well-appointed “upstairs” realm of the modish Dutch elite.
This scene reminds us who stoked the original market for pictures like these: not cardinals or noblemen seeking canvases creaking with religious, historical or mythological machinery, but the enriched, enterprising haute-bourgeoisie of the Dutch Republic, who liked to see themselves reflected in their pictures, surrounded by an abundance of “stuff ” – the spoils of prosperity.
This truly is an immaculate, glowing exhibition, presented clearly and simply. The “fine paintings” by the likes of Dou offer a bejewelled contrast to the group of sparser yet brighter pictures representing the innovations that occurred within Delft during the 1650s, spearheaded by Vermeer; the two pictures by Pieter de Hooch, for instance, are both saturated with intoxicating sunshine, booting us out of the gloomy 17th-century Dutch interior, clotted with the casual clutter of glinting opulence, and into the light. After looking at Dou, De Hooch almost requires us to don sunglasses.
Yes, most of these pictures will be familiar to many. And yes, frankly, they should always be on display, for free (here there is a charge). But do not miss the opportunity to scrutinise these wonderful works of art. You will not regret a single minute spent in their company.