New York — Johannes Vermeer, the Dutch painter famous for his quiet domestic scenes, careful composition and exquisite sense of light and shadow, produced only 34 paintings in his lifetime. Each sold for the equivalent of a year's pay for the middle-class patrons then of his work.
Now, more than half of the Vermeers in existence many freshly cleaned and sparkling, and some never before seen in the United States are on view in New York City.
"The Procuress," by Johannes Vermeer painted in 1656, is among 15 works by the painter in "Vermeer and The Delft School," a major show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"Vermeer and the Delft School," a major show featuring 15 works by the prized painter alongside the works of other Dutch masters, opened last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and will remain on view through May 27.
Three more Vermeers are on permanent view at the Frick Collection, a short stroll down Fifth Avenue from the Met. In honor of the Met show, they've been hung together for the first time in decades.
"It's quite unusual to have this many Vermeers in one city," says Walter Liedtke, who organized the show in consultation with Axel Rueger, curator of Dutch paintings at the National Gallery in London.
The artist, who lived and worked in Delft, Holland, died at 43 in 1675. Although about a third of the works are from the first half of the 17th century, the show focuses on the key decades of the 1650s and '60s, when Delft painting took a turn toward the more naturalistic.
Highlights include such rarely lent masterpieces as the 1667 "The Art of Painting," on loan from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the 1656 "The Procuress," from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden, Germany.
"This is the first time it has ever been seen in this country. The museum never lent it before," Liedtke says. "But a greater painting and second in difficulty to get is the 'Art of Painting,' and we're thrilled to have that, too."
The Met show is unprecedented in that it places the famous artist in the context of his time and the environment of Delft, one of Holland's oldest cities. In so doing, the show shatters the common misconception of Vermeer as a lone genius in a backwater town.
Even in Vermeer's time, Delft only 3 miles from the court in The Hague was a city of reserved sophistication and wealthy patrons, many of whom had earned so much money in the beer and linen trades that they happily shelled out the equivalent of the annual income of a skilled cabinetmaker for one of Vermeer's paintings.
"I'm not saying he wasn't a genius. He was. He was exceptional," says Liedtke. "But in this show, you see both how he fits in some respects, and for the first time you really understand how he is a genius, because you see the beauty of the average level around him, and the next best level, and he's still ahead of that."
After New York, the show travels to the National Gallery in London, where it will be on view from June 20 through Sept. 16, 2001.
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