[MUSIC PLAYING]
The exhibition Vermeer and
the Masters of Genre Painting
brings together
very similar works
to show relationships
between the scenes
that various artists
have painted.
This focuses on four
comparisons of such works
to try to show the techniques
that these artists had
and how similar and yet varied
they are in the way they
rendered their forms.
This selection gives
you some feeling
for the ways artists
rendered materials,
expressions, light and
dark, and the way they
handled their forms
that are to be found
in many paintings
in the exhibition
or are also in the National
Gallery's permanent collection.
In this comparison, we are
looking at two lovely paintings
of a woman writing a letter,
one by Johannes Vermeer
and the other by
Gerard ter Borch.
In this detail of the faces,
one sees the different handling
of paint of these
two great artists.
Vermeer blends his
paints very smoothly
to get a soft contour, a
kind of flowing of light that
hits her forehead and melts
into the shadows of her face
as she looks out at the viewer.
With Ter Borch, he has very
small, little feathery strokes
that are quite distinct when
you get close to the painting
and look at it.
His soft modeling comes from
the modulation of these strokes
rather than the soft
blending of forms.
With Vermeer, one sees how
he has used lead tin yellow
to create amazing highlights
on the shoulder of the lady
so that he accents the
shoulder to give light hitting
the fabric with accents
along the ridges of the fold
to give a very three dimensional
quality to lady's form.
And Ter Borch is much subtler
in his handling of paint,
much thinner.
And again, he has these
very delicate touches
that allow him to create
a translucency of form
with very thin paint.
Vermeer has painted
his blue fabric
with a very expensive
pigment, natural ultramarine.
And that expensive pigment was
actually consciously chosen
not only because of the
beautiful blue color
that it had, but also the
expensive pigments helped
raise the prices of paintings.
Ter Borch, the other hand,
has created a wonderful rhythm
of colors and shapes as
the tapestry on the table
has been pushed back.
And with very delicate
touches of his brush,
he's able to articulate
the whites and the oranges
and the yellows and the
blues and the blacks
to create a wonderful
resonance of color and rhythm
that gives a sense of the
emotional energy of the woman
who's writing the letter.
In this comparison
of two great works,
one by Gerard ter Borch,
The Suitor's Visit,
and one by Gabriel
Metsu, The Intruder,
one sees two artists painting
very similar scenes and, yet,
with a different
handling of paint.
The Ter Borch painting
is a quiet scene,
where a suitor comes through the
door being greeted by a woman.
And the Metsu is
a scene of action.
A lot of drama going on in a
very similar type of setting.
That difference in
style and character
is evident in the
way the artists have
painted the scenes.
In the Ter Borch, in
the detail of the woman
greeting the suitor, one sees
in her gaze a very careful way
that Ter Borch has rendered
her gaze and the expression
on her face, her eyes, her
mouth as she is looking out
at the suitor.
With Metsu, on the
other hand, she
is just clamoring out of bed.
And this feeling of movement
is evident in the way
Metsu has rendered
her face, which
is much softer in the sort of
fluid movement of the brush
that kind of softens her form.
So you feel this, in
the way it's painted,
the sense of movement
of the woman.
Ter Borch was a master
at painting fabrics,
and satins, the shimmering
quality of satin.
Here one sees yellowish shadows
and the very white accents
that flow together in
a very beautiful way.
Metsu looked at
Ter Borch and tried
to emulate that
quality of the satin.
But there's a kind of
a different rhythm that
can be seen through the
quickness of the brush
stroke that is also
relevant to the fluid notion
of the activity of the figure.
Whereas the Metsu has a much
softer handling of rhythms
of brush strokes on that
tapestry in his painting
so that all the different
strokes blend together
in a very different way.
This comparison brings
together two paintings
with an unusual subject
matter, and that
is a woman with a parrot.
And in one painting, on
the left, Frans van Mieris,
you have a genre scene of
a lady feeding the parrot.
And on the right,
you have a painting
by Caspar Netscher
showing a portrait
of a woman holding a parrot.
You have the two
parrots, a very same,
exactly the same type of parrot.
They're African greys.
And how carefully the artist
has used the parrot as part
of the concept of the painting.
But in the Van
Mieris, a genre scene,
the parrot is
actually looking down
at the woman who's holding
food for, to feed it.
And in the Netscher, the parrot
is looking out at the viewer,
almost as having his portrait
painted just like his mistress.
Van Mieris was a
painter from Leiden.
And he was renowned for his very
refined and delicate handling
of paint.
And that quality is
particularly evident in detail
of the woman's face--
very, very carefully
rendered where you never
see any brushstroke.
Netscher was a student
of Gerard ter Borch.
And he is much freer with his
brushstroke than is Van Mieris.
And you can feel the sort
of freedom of stroke--
you can see the brush
strokes all the way through,
very delicate strokes,
but, nevertheless,
quite different than the way Van
Mieris has rendered his forms.
Van Mieris' fine
manner of painting,
which was so famous
throughout the Netherlands,
is particularly
evident in the fabric
of the material for her
jacket and then the fur trim,
which is so fluffy and
soft that you can almost
feel your hand touching it.
It's just wonderful
character that he's
able to give to the form.
As opposed to Netscher who
wants to enliven his figure
with very brushy strokes.
And it's quite interesting to
see how in this quiet portrait,
he has enlivened the
figure in the way he
handles material of the fabric.
The subject of a young woman
playing musical instruments
in the privacy of
her home is one
that many Dutch artists loved
to depict in their genre scenes.
Jan Steen has here depicted
a very beautiful young woman
very much engaged
in a harpsichord,
looking at the music
as a gentleman sits,
leans on her instrument,
and gazes down at her.
The woman is not looking
out at the viewer.
And it's really a genre scene.
Gerrit Dou has a single woman
playing at a clavichord,
but looking out at the viewer.
So, in fact, this is a
portrait of a woman playing
her instrument, rather
than a pure genre scene.
The portrait quality
of Dou's painting
is particularly evident in the
way he has treated her face.
He's looked very
carefully at her features
and has portrayed
them to give her
a very distinctive personality--
very, very fine technique.
This is something
he was famous for,
how refined he was in
the handling of paint.
And that is something
that Jan Steen also
was able to emulate
in his paintings.
Although, in a genre
scene such as this,
he did not portray her nearly
with as much detail as Dou
did in his painting.
Dutch genre painters were
aware of the types of fabrics
that they rendered
in their paintings.
And so in Dou's painting,
you have a velvet fabric.
The green velvet of
the lady's jacket
is very soft and the
way it is handled
with yellowish white accents
along the edges of the folds.
Whereas Steen wanted to
depict a satin fabric.
And, thus, the shimmering
quality of satin
is rendered in a very
fluid handling of paint
along the ridges and in and out.
So you have a more
flowing quality
where light seems to shine
off the fabric itself.
Dutch artists were particularly
keen on examining light.
And this is particularly
evident in the book in the Steen
painting where you see
the way the light hits
the front page and the shadow
in the gutter of the book.
It is very carefully
modulated, feelings
of light across that
very simple little form.
Dou, on the other hand,
wants to enliven his painting
by doing something quite
wonderful, the curl of the page
that the woman has turned,
been turning the page,
that this very subtle
feeling of activity that
is evident in the handling
of the book and the way light
accents that little curl
is part of the wonders
of this painting.
