Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting by Eddy Schavemaker

Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting Reviews

• 
  Marks54

  This book is the exhibition guide for the Vermeer Exhibition that recently closed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. I do not normally include exhibition guides in my book listings but I will make an exception for this. This is a serious volume produced in conjunction with the three museums sponsoring this exhibition and published by Yale University Press. While the current low level of public sponsorship of the arts is lamentable, an unforeseen and more positive consequence has been that museum curators are working very hard to put together big shows, often partnering with other museums, that draw large crowds of people to come to the shows. This was a superb show comparable in its impact to other recent blockbusters. The major Art Institute of Chicago Impressionist show of a few years back comes to mind as an example.
  
  There is no doubt that Vermeer was a great genius, whose masterpieces are well worth visiting on their own accord. There are not that many of them, however, and the museums holding them are reluctant to do much lending. The argument made by this exhibition and in the book is that to fully appreciate Vermeer’s accomplishments, it is important to place him and his work in the context of what his peers were also doing during this golden age of Dutch art - a fairly short period of time at that. The idea is that while Vermeer, Dou, Ter Borch, and others in the exhibition were outstanding artists individually, they also took part in a collective activity to develop the category of “Genre Painting” into a distinctive area that was critically acclaimed by art experts and highly valued by collectors, dealers, and wealthy patrons. Through rivalry with each other and a strong pattern of imitating and emulating each other (in a positive and constructive way) these artists enabled the development of a new area of Dutch painting, with its own traditions and rules and its own standards of beauty and technical excellence.
  
  To put it another way, the book recounts how the rise of the Dutch provinces to commercial prominence following independence from Spain produced conditions for a high end market for painters who focused on the lives and experiences of Dutch elites, especially their domestic life. The newly wealthy public was willing to pay for high quality art that celebrated them. The problem in doing this concerns what the product actually is and how value is ascertained and prices set. This is a continuing problem in studies of business models in the fine arts. What constitutes excellence? What should wealthy people pay for their art?
  
  The answer to this issues is that Vermeer and his colleagues jointly developed a model of high end Dutch art in the second half of the 17th century by looking at what their colleagues and rivals did and then trying to produce higher quality work - to excel in comparison with the top artists that were at work at the time. How these artists did this was a combination of individual genius and a collective sensitivity towards how to produce work that could be compared with those of their rivals but yet was sufficiently different to permit individual skill and genius to shine through. This is a tough balancing act in the best of times and it is not surprising that the heyday of Dutch genre painting was around 30 years.
  
  The book provides a series of essays on topics related to this general argument and I am generally persuaded. It also discusses the various ways in which these issues have been researched. This is well done - especially for a museum exhibition guide. The essays are generally easy to follow and some efforts have been undertaken to tamp down the jargon. The chapter authors are generally persuasive, although given our lack of information about Vermeer, there are not that many alternative stories worth fighting about.
  
  I do not know if the authors intended it, but the implications of these arguments continue to have value today. How does one judge quality in high quality businesses with lots of intangible assets (reputation, skill, access, brand) at play? Is there an objective quality standard for intellectual and artistic products or is the standard what experts think and what the market will pay? The book is also superb at outlining the basic working model for the market for high end Dutch art after 1650, including the different geographic bases for how the art market worked..
  
  Oh - I almost forget - the book is filled with superb reproductions of some truly beautiful art. Vermeer’s 10 paintings constitute only one seventh of the exhibit but they are all striking. The other works are superb as well. You could spend a lot of time just looking at the art work - and much of the supporting content for the subsections of the exhibit is also included in the book.
• 
  T P Kennedy

  A very worthy catalogue. There's far too much text for my taste and not enough illustration. There are very few full page images of the work. Many of the essays are very worthy and academic but don't really illustrate the work for the general reader. Disappointing.
• 
  Popeye

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