Brush with Fate: The Original Painting by Jonathan Janson

a Hallmark Hall of Fame Production based of the best-selling novel :
Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland

click here to purchase a print of Girl in Hyacinth Blue

An Account of How I Painted the "Girl in Hyacinth Blue"

click here for a large scale image of the painting

First of all, the "lost Vermeer" painting in Susan Vreeland's novel Girl In Hyacinth Blue is not a copy of an extant painting by Vermeer. It is an imagined work by Vermeer, created in the mind and heart the author. It is a painting with its own persona and not a copy. And herein lay both the challenge and stimulus for me as a professional painter and above all as a long time aficionado of Vermeer's art. My "job," if making such a painting can be called a job, was to bring to life the Vermeer which is at the heart of the novel and film.

After I had provided Hallmark with a number of preparatory sketches based on the novel's description, it was decided, due to the complexity of the painting and its fundamental role in the film, to reconstruct an accurate scale replica of a room similar to the those seen in Vermeer's paintings to be used as a model for the painting. It was built in Cinecittà, Rome. The replica was afterwards dismantled and transported to Holland and used to shoot the final scenes of the film. Furnishings of the times including Turkish carpet, an aged map of Europe, lions head chairs, tiles, and various other props which were either found or made expressly. For the first shoot, a sit-in actress posed with period costume, make-up and hair.

Glenn Close as she inspects the "lost Vermeer"

The director, art director, director of photography and I met on the reconstructed set to discuss final touches. I then spent long hours composing the various objects and finding their exact position which hopefully would convey some of the sublime order which is such a fundamental part of Vermeer's work. The following day the set was illuminated by the lighting crew, the final posed of the sitter was decided and photographs were taken from which I would work. Having once reacted with the physical reality of set and sitter, these photographs provided me with an image that in a way paralleled with the image Vermeer may have seen through the camera obscura which he employed while painting.

I later met with members of film's staff in Amsterdam to take the photographs of the recently cast actress who played the part of Vermeer's daughter Magdalena, the sitter of the Girl in Hyacinth Blue. I also had the chance to pass long hours in front of the four Vermeer's in the Rijksmuseum and absorb some of their miraculous light that I hoped to convey in my own "Vermeer."

After returning to Rome, the actual painting was begun. It was important to me to employ as much as possible Vermeer's particular techniques which I have studied for years and incorporated into my own work taking into account the limited time available. The painting was finished in eight weeks. For reasons of security I also made an exact copy of the original which came out surprisingly quick and was virtually identical to the original.

For those who wish to see the procedures employed in the painting, click here.

Jonathan Janson