Our son Nick is going to have a stab at living in the great metropolis that is London. Although the world-wide web gives you instant access to everyone, everywhere, it's not the same as seeking them out in the street. Hopefully this move will open up doors to the world of illustration or music, or both.
We felt so privileged to attend this event at which the curators and other experts were present, as well as worthies from the University and sponsors including the Dutch Embassy. There was a lot of politicking and hand-shaking going on but we were really transfixed by the paintings and delighted to spend some time with Betsy herself.
As a young man, I obtained a BA in the history of art and music, probably by collecting Green Shield Stamps! Anyway, I still remember a bit of it, and Katy has opened our eyes to the "soap opera" that is the symbolism of the genre. Basically, everyone is up to something scandalous yet the paintings appear to show these women as virtuous ladies in a sea of serenity. Open bird-cages mean that virtue has flown; a map on the wall means that the husband is away and almost every object in a painting has a symbolic or metaphorical meaning. Having a stab at deciphering all the clues is great fun, but its not the only way to encounter these paintings.
The exhibition is accompanied by a superb book by Betsy which we are reading right now. Once we have absorbed all the information contained there-in, we will return to the exhibit to have second, better informed, inspection.
My first reaction is that these paintings, though very much defined within a couple of decades of Dutch history, are a kind of a hybrid between two styles.
Most of the paintings are familiar from reproductions, but when you have the paintings right in front of you, there are some striking observations to be made. Firstly, they are not very big and secondly, they are very uneven in their treatment of detail. To put it simply; much of the background is often dealt with in a pretty basic manner while a lot of detail may be present in the treatment of the subject itself. But it's not as simple as that. Sometimes parts of the background are also painted in great detail when the subject seems, well, blurred! Why should this be so?
The mid 17th century was an amazing time to live. Here in England we had a civil war going on, but we were also settling New England and exploring the worlds of geography and science. We were beginning to understand the physics of light and how our eyes function like miniature cameras. Magnifying lenses were being manufactured for telescopes and other uses and were becoming affordable. One use of such a lens was to make a camera-obscura which projected an image of the real world onto a wall, or even a canvas. A feature of such an image is that some parts of were sharp and others out of focus. Artists had to decide to ignore the focus problem or embrace it as an insight into what we really see. Vermeer manipulated his focus, giving soft edges to his subjects. In some paintings the point of focus was on the far wall, thus drawing the observer inside the picture.
Selectivity in the use of detail may also have been influenced by what the camera-obscura revealed, but I think the treatment of detail in small areas of a larger painting reveals a total switch in style from the broad-brush to the tradition of miniature painting. Am I on to something? I must go back and check.
The exhibition runs at the Fitzwilliam Museum until January, and it's free.
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