Interview with with Susan Vreeland, author of Girl in Hyacinth Blue

INTERVIEW......Dec. 2, 2002

Susan Vreeland:   Though not an art historian, I'm more familiar with painting than other art forms, having had painters in my distant family and growing up surrounded by them, so I was naturally attracted thereto. Also, paintings have been more accessible to me through the wealth of art books published currently. Galileo wrote that painting, which is a two dimensional form, is a higher achievement in replicating life than sculpture which is already a three-dimensional form and therefore requires less of its maker. An interesting thesis, but it does not account for the emotional or spiritual context of a work, only its qualities of physical representation. By the sheer volume of paintings I've encountered, it's natural that I turned to them, though I've had reactions just as moving to some pieces of sculpture by Rodin, Bernini and Michelangelo.

With a Dutch name but no known family history, I found myself, during a period of extended illness, poring over the National Gallery catalog of the 1995-96 Johannes Vermeer exhibition, and imagining my way out of my uncertain circumstances by imagining my way into these paintings. In his paintings of women in their homes, as I was, caught in a reflective moment, bathed by that gorgeous honey-colored light which also touched with significance the carefully chosen items in the scene, I found a healing tranquility. They reminded me of Wordsworth's line: "With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony and by the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things." I saw that Vermeer had the same reverence for hand-made things that I felt. He, too, was a lover of the qualities of things: the pale luminous colors in a hand-dipped window pane, a woman's silk jacket with fur trim, the rough nap of a hand-knotted Turkish carpet, a hand-drawn wall map.

He invested them with connotations. An earthenware pitcher, a loaf of bread, a sewing basket suggest home and family. The window, a letter, the Turkish carpet, the map all speak of an alluring world beyond the home. He was offering them as objects worthy of stories. The cords of connection tightened, and I felt free to partner with him in the act of creation. To his spare interior, for example, I added a glass of milk which, to my fictional Vermeer, "made the whole corner sacred by the tenderness of just living."

Because Girl in Hyacinth Blue is more of a novel of the effects of one imaginary painting on people in four centuries rather than the life of the painter, it was an advantage that relatively little is known about Vermeer. Had there been as much scholarship on Vermeer as on Rembrandt, for example, I would have been overwhelmed. As it was, I was able to discover just enough to populate and shape and make concrete the two stories that deal directly with Vermeer out of the eight stories in the book. The window bathing a figure in warm light I took from Woman with a Water Jug and Woman with a Pearl Necklace. The reflection of a woman's face in that window was suggested by Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. The color of Magdalena's smock came from Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. The Spanish chair with lion's head finials, the black and white tile floor, the map, the red and blue Turkish carpet can be seen in several paintings already named. The idea of sewing came from The Lacemaker, and the idea of a glass of milk on the table came from The Milkmaid even though those paintings did not have the objects I invented. Vermeer's Portrait of a Young Woman, which melts me with love, was the face I held in my mind when writing Vermeer's daughter, Magdalena's, character. It wasn't until after the book was published that I ever saw an original Vermeer face to face. Those three occasions deepened my appreciation for his art, for the mastery of his brush strokes, his glazing, his details. To be in their presence was as profound a joy as I can imagine.
This is not a thought that had occurred to me, no. There is, however, a definite appeal to the emotions in his paintings showing women reading or writing letters. The intensity of this communication, so slow at the time, is palpable. One can imagine both Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window and Woman in Blue Reading a Letter devouring quickly and then rereading the long awaited letter where every word is precious.