Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence @ The Fitz

It’s confession time. When it comes to Dutch art, I am a massive nerd. One of my favourite academic texts is entitled 17th Century Dutch Flower Painting (brilliant bedtime reading); I had to buy a second copy of Girl With A Pearl Earring because my first copy fell apart, and when I found out four months ago that the Fitzwilliam was putting on a Dutch exhibition, I prematurely and perhaps egotistically made a demand to my dear editor that I be the one to review it.

Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, Johannes Vermeer © The National Gallery, London

Dutch artists of the 17th century, the ‘Golden Age’, are known for their attention to detail, realistic paintwork, and their glossy use of oil paints.Centuries before anyone decided that the only way art could survive was to compete with its close cousin, the photograph, the Dutch were the trendsetters. They were there before the BP Portrait Awards were filled with canvas after canvas of photorealist work, saturating the exhibition with monotonous show-offs. It’s hard not to marvel at their skill. Every painting shows instances of foreshortened lutes, crumpled sheets, and perspectival rooms. The Dutch were masters of verisimilitude – they could paint the world in a way that no one else had been able to before, and they wanted to prove it.

There is a stillness and mystery that is present in all of the paintings in this exhibition, which encourages the spectator to create their own back story. Pieter de Hooch provides an ambiguity which is bordering on the frustrating, and Jacobus Vrel’s paintings are virtually pre-Surrealist in their bizarre combination of motifs. Woman at the Window can only be described as strange and melancholic, with its sparsely furnished room, and ghostlike face of a child peering through the window.

Woman at a Window, © Fondation Custodia, Collection Frits Lugt, Paris

A painting which provides an element of fun is Nicolaes Maes’ The Eavesdropper, in which a somewhat impish looking girl is found listening to a private conversation behind a wooden door. Given her cheeky expression of joy at overhearing what one imagines is a juicy piece of gossip, anyone would think she was a writer for The Tab.

The climax of this exhibition, and the magnum opus of the Dutch Golden Age is Vermeer’s The Lacemaker, borrowed from The Louvre, seen for the first time in the UK, and at first glance, a bit of a disappointment. It is small, and a bit dim, and the frame is more impressive. But move closer, elbow those OAPs and impatient school children out of your way, and look at it properly. Because, when it comes to Vermeer, his style is so much more than the perfect realistic style of the other painters. Vermeer had an eye for colour, light and shade, that sets him apart as an artist, a man who viewed the world through his own, special lens. The Lacemaker is an optical illusion, one of those paintings you can get right up close to, and make no sense of, but which gradually pulls itself together as you move away.

The Lacemaker, © Réunion des Musées Nationaux/ Gérard Blot

Take your time with this exhibition. It’s a big ask, especially for you hangover-riddled freshers, but perhaps make the effort to visit in the morning, when it’s quieter, so you can actually enjoy the tranquility of these paintings, and appreciate the skill involved. The standard is high, so be warned if you are a painter yourself; it may make you want to throw away your paintbrush in disgust.