The Girl with a Wineglass

critical excerpt

c. 1662
Albert Blankert, Vermeer: 1632–1675, 1975

c. 1659–1660
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Vermeer: The Complete Works, New York, 1997

c. 1659–1660
Walter Liedtke, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, New York, 2008

c. 1661–1662
Wayne Franits, Vermeer, 2015

The fine, plain-weave linen with a thread count of 14 x 15 per cm² retains its original tacking edges; on both left and right sides are selvedges; The support has been glue/paste lined. The double ground consists of a white layer, containing chalk, lead white, and umber, followed by a reddish brown layer. The ground was left uncovered along several outlines of the figures and the wine jug. It extends a few millimeters over the tacking edges.

Parts of the window, red dress, chair, and many of the highlights were painted wet-in-wet, with impasto in the highlights, the fruit, and the red skirt of the figure in the window. Ultramarine is used extensively in the window, the background, the tablecloth, and in the underpaint of the shadows of the girl's red dress. The position of the heads of the standing man and the girl, and the bows in her hair, have been slightly altered. Some parts of the painting appear unfinished, such as the wall between the male figures, and the arm and cuff of the girl. There is degraded medium in the ultramarine mixtures and the pigment appears discolored.

* Johannes Vermeer (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art and Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis - Washington and The Hague, 1995, edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.)

literature

Not a single sitter in Vermeer's painting has ever been identified. The most obvious, but completely wrong candidate would be Janet Vogel, whose coat of arms stands out on the opened window. Documents show that she had died eight years before Vermeer was even born. Another candidate might be Maria de Knuijt, the wife of Vermeer's wealthy Delft patron, Pieter van Ruijven, since it is almost certain that this painting was part of their family collection. We know that in her will Maria bequeathed to Vermeer 500 florins. This sum was comparable to the cost of one to three expensive cabinet pictures. Such a bequest, made to a painter who was not a family member, was possibly unique in 17th-century Netherlands. It must count as a gesture of special esteem and commitment to the painter's well-being.

Although De Knuijt may have been acting on behalf of her husband, she had brought a great share of money to their marriage, and her taste must have been taken into account. As a supporter of the Orthodox wing of the Reformed church, De Knuijt might have found particularly appealing the chaste dignity that informs Vermeer's interpretations of femininity. However, the presence of the Janet Vogel's coat of arms would be in conflict with Maria de Knuijt's social identity which must have been central question of her life. It cannot be ruled out that Vermeer's own wife, Catharina Bolnes, had posed for the painting but in a sense, the sitter's identity is besides the point.

Amorum emblemata
Otto van Veen
1608

Following the atrocities of the war of independence with Spain, the people of the Netherlands turned their thoughts to the lighter sides of life, including naturally, love. Consequentially, in the second half of the century courtship and of lovemaking had become one of the most popular subjects among Dutch genre artists. Painters had ample sources to draw from including moralizing literature, love poems, songbooks, guides to courting etiquette, plays as well as increasingly popular collections of prose love stories. Several of these were printed in Vermeer's home town Delft and Vermeer's paintings show that he was no doubt aware of them. Earlier 17th-century art images typically displayed merry outdoor garden parties populated with Dutch youth decked out in the latest fashions engaged in courtship, dancing and music making. These paintings descend from the iconography of the garden of love . To a certain degree such images must have derived from the popular pastoral festivals (Fêtes Champêtres), which recalled the ideals of ancient Arcadia popular in the court of Louis XIV and XV.

By the 1650s, when Vermeer crafted his first interiors, the garden of love theme had undergone significant changes. The gatherings were reduced to two or three members which no longer took place in open spaces but within the intimate confines of well-to-do homes. Vermeer drew most of his compositional and thematic models from Gerrit ter Borch, who captured the finest nuances of costume and gesture, and Pieter de Hooch, who was the first artist to stage them in the sunlit corner of a room.

The Glass of Wine in Berlin and the present Girl with a Wineglass appear to represent a very similar theme. The presence of the ceramic tiles and ornate stained-glass windows in both pictures would suggest that they were painted in the same room. For this reason Vermeer experts tend to date these two works very closely. However, on close inspection the two paintings present notable technical disparities which may suggest that they were painted within a somewhat larger interval of time.

The Berlin painting present a rougher surface with loaded color reminiscent of the grainy textures found in Officer and Laughing Girl and the famous Milkmaid. Instead, the Girl with a Wineglass presents a very smooth, almost polished surface. Following this work, Vermeer's paint application became evermore subtle. Art historian Mariët Westermann has suggested that Vermeer had begun to work in the so-called net, or smooth manner, which was in vogue among the most sought-after painters of the time. The new, smooth manner went along with the more genteel and elegant themes. The rouw, or rough manner of the great Rembrandt was criticized and rejected by the most art writers of the time such as Samuel Hoogstraten and Gérard de Lairesse.

As with other Vermeer's group scenes, an air of ambiguity lingers around the present picture. The standing figure of the stained-glass window is surely a symbol of Temperance which symbolizes good deeds and emotional control. Likewise, it is very probable that the staid portrait on the rear wall provides some sort of admonitory comment to the scene which unfolds.

However, are we to make of the male figure slumped in the background? Is he, as the window, a caution against overindulgence? Is he drunk, dozing or does his pose suggest lovesickness and melancholy?

Most probably the ambiguity which permeates Vermeer's work is present in certain 17th-century still life paintings, many of which seem to walk a fine line between an invitation and a condemnation of sensual pleasure.

The art historian Paul Taylor has recently taken a fresh look at Vermeer's celebrated compositions in the light of 17th-century concepts of composition, or ordinantie, as described by the influential Dutch artist and art theorist, Gérard de Lairesse.

Taylor reveals that one of the key terms in Lairesse's discussion of composition is "the concept of probability, waarschynelykheid; indeed de Lairesse tells us that 'Probability is the most important thing to bear in mind when composing a picture.'" According to de Lairesse "one must make it evident not only in the general disposition, but also in each particular object, and attentively reject things which are in conflict with it." "As an example debLairesse's tells us that if we are painting a dining room we should make it clear whether a meal is about to take place, or has already taken place; if the latter, we should depict empty vessels lying in disorder, empty plates."

Gesture, dress and the proper posture and their disposition were all marshaled to clarify the narrative and strengthened its message. Fussy details had to be avoided lest they detract from the overriding message. De Lairesse even illustrated how the artist might suggest the social position of his sitter by the way in which they hold their glasses. Position No. 5 (see detail above) is comparable to the gesture seen in the present work, which was the most refined. As de Lairesse wrote, "A prince holds it handily and cautiously below on the foot."

What is unusual about de Lairesse's concept of composition is that he seems oblivious to the formal, purely aesthetic concerns which, instead, dominate modern understanding of pictorial composition, in favoring above all the "force of narrative."

Although it often goes unnoticed, the great majority of 17th-century Dutch genre interiors are set in the left-hand corner of a room. The side wall has a window which provides illumination and the background wall runs parallel, except in rare cases, to the picture plane. The origins of this pictorial formula may be linked with the fact that an artist usually painted with the light source coming from the left so that the shadow projected by his hand did not disturb the area on which he was working. The fact that western spectators read from left to right also contributes to the success of this formula.

Woman Drinking with Soldiers
Pieter de Hooch
1658
Oil on canvas, 69 x 60 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris

It is an accepted fact that Vermeer drew much of his compositional and thematic contents directly from his Dutch collegues. In particular, the painting which seems to have inspired the present work is Pieter de Hooch's Woman Drinking with Soldiers (1658).

In the 1650s, just before De Hooch left Delft for Amsterdam in 1660 or 1661, he produced some his best pictures admirably presenting cool daylight which gently filters through open widows, bathing the interiors with a light interrupted only by the presence of a few selected figures and objects.

Although similar figure groupings had been devised by earlier artists, De Hooch was the first artist to set them in a coherently-defined three-dimensional space illuminated by a bright bright light. In a certain sense, for the first time, De Hooch had made the description of space as important as the figures themselves. Some critics assert that Vermeer went one step further and made space and light the true subject of his canvases.

The Book of the Courtier
Baldassare Castiglione
(English translation of Il Cortegiano)

Perhaps the long hair and loose-fitting dress of both men in this work reflect a purposely "negligent" or "nonchalance " style which had become fashionable among men by the 1650s. Widely circulated manners books noted that it was not considered manly for one's dress to be too neat. Long hair became popular in different classes (perhaps because it could be achieved by those who could not afford expensive clothing). This fashion caused such alarm that church councils generating a controversy known as "The Dispute of the Locks" in 1645.

At least some of the inspiration for these fashions came from Baldassare Castiglione's book The Courtier (1528), which describes the ideals and behavior for the perfect gentleman whose appearance, referred to as sprezzatura, should appear effortless and even offhanded.

Peter Burke describes sprezzatura as "careful negligence" and "effortless and ease" maintaining that the ideal courtier is someone who "conceals art, and presents what is done and said as if it was done without effort and virtually without thought."

Perhaps the austere figure of the formal portrait that looms in the background is a comment on loosening mores which earlier generations of stoic Dutchmen criticized. The term sprezzatura was eventually applied to a loose style of painting such as that of Giogione, Titian, Velasquez and in the Netherlands, Rembrandt.

Teasing the Pet
Frans van Mieris
1660
27.5 x 20 cm.
Mauritshuis, The Hague

One of the most distinctive characteristics of Vermeer's working method was his penchant for assimilating multiple motifs and stylistic elements drawn from the works of his colleagues. In the present composition by Vermeer, we find traces of Pieter de Hooch's rationalized interiors, the luxurious satin costumes of Gerrit ter Borch and the interactive "body language" of the figures found in the works of Frans van Mieris, bound together into an original, artistic solution.

In the Teasing the Pet of Van Mieris, which is often related to the present work, Vermeer may have appreciated the dynamics between the two figures where the less-than-subtle cavalier who attempts to make contact with the young girl by pulling her little dog's ear. Van Mieris is credited for having invented this motif which was later frequently repeated by his colleagues.

As usual, Vermeer rarely quoted his sources verbatim. Instead of the innocent puppy, he chose to formalize the encounter by replacing the anecdotal puppy with a more ceremonial offering of wine. While the lady in Van Mieris' work, at least for the moment, shuns her courtier's advances, the women in Vermeer's paintings looks out to the viewer and does not let precisely know her feelings. Thus each viewer may project into the picture his own thoughts and expectations becoming a participant e in the work's narrative.

Bergerette Dont vient cela (4 lutes) [892 KB]
from: Tilman Susato, Dansereye (1551)
http://www.amazon.com/Susato-Dansereye/dp/B0017ZH6LI/ref=dmusic_cd_album/102-4581861-1477717

The Refused Glass
Ludolf de Jongh
1650–1655
117 x 92 cm.
National Gallery, London

Even though the present work has been most frequently linked to models by De Hooch (Woman Drinking with Soldiers, see related artworks number 1, below) and Frans van Mieris, art historian Roland E. Fleischer has provides evidence that Vermeer's initial inspiration may have a been a painting of the Dutch artist Ludolf de Jongh, The Refused Glass (see image left). Analyzing the particularities of the two figures' costumes in De Jongh's work Fleischer dates the painting somewhere between 1650 and 1655, which suggests that it was the inspiration for not only Vermeer's but for De Hooch's painting as well. De Jongh was not of Delft where Vermeer and De Hooch traded ideas but he was almost certainly taught De Hooch in Rotterdam before the latter moved to Delft. It is known that the two remained in contact even after the De Hooch's move to Delft in the 1660s.

The pictures also may be more closely tied in theme than is apparent at first glance. Although the traditional title The Refused Glass is "based on the gesture of the seated lady's right hand, by which she supposedly declines the drink offered by the gentleman who bends towards her," Fleischer notes that on closer examination, "the man's right had, which holds the glass between the thumb and index finger may gracefully support the woman's hand with the remaining three finger. Instead of spurning the offer of wine, the lady may be coy recipient." Analogously, the lady in Vermeer's composition shows no sign of refusal.

De Jongh's work is uncharacteristically large for a genre painting and the Brunswick picture by Vermeer is one of the few large-scale interiors by Vermeer. Furthermore, both woman wear red satin dresses and fruit is displayed in both.

Fleischer conjectures that the subject may be a translation of a classical theme Venus Ceres and Bacchus in harmonious relationship. The three classical deities formed a popular trio in Western thought through the centuries based on Terence's proverb, "without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus is chilled" that is, without food and wine love grows cold. Thus, De Jongh and Vermeer would have artist given a contemporary setting of everyday life "a deeper significance by investing it with a time-honored universal truth already expressed in Ancient literature, thereby uniting the category of genre with those of allegory and history."

Woman Drinking with Soldiers
Pieter de Hooch
1658
69 x 60 cm.
Musée du Louvre, Paris