Good afternoon.
I began working on this painting
about two years ago
with the goal of publishing
an entry for the National
Gallery Systematic Catalog
of Dutch Paintings.
In a concerted effort
to understand this work,
place it in context,
and write this entry,
I have managed to scratch
the surface, at best.
Research has been
productive only in revealing
how much more research is
needed.
So taking full advantage
of the title of this lecture
series, "Works in Progress,"
I will share the narrative
of the course of my research
thus far.
I invite you to look
at this painting,
simply to sit and look.
We have a pleasing yet
basic interior of a home
in which a young woman sits
on a chair gazing out
the Dutch door.
Two chairs flank
the young woman, whose
proportions appear somewhat
squat and strange.
I mean the chairs, not
the woman.
Behind her, a bedstead
along the wall reveals a woman
resting with her head somewhat
awkwardly positioned,
her eyes closed, and one hand
visible above the blankets.
The young woman, possibly
a nurse, seems content,
contemplative.
But she is inaccessible.
Her thoughts are her own.
The focus of her gaze
is also her own.
Framing the bedstead
and the fireplace, which
dominates the right side
of the composition,
are a variety
of stoneware plates.
Two candle holders terminate
either ends of the fireplace
mantel, enabling us to discern
more clearly the delineation
of the fireplace structure,
which juts out of the wall
and overlaps the painted
line of the bedstead
at a perpendicular angle.
Small kitchen implements hang
just below the mantel,
echoing the placement and sheen
of the candlesticks above,
both of which
provide an interesting contrast
to the color and surface finish
of the brass tones of the bed
warmer hung
to the left of the opening
of the bedstead.
The modest fire burns
in the hearth and is accompanied
by a set of fireplace tongs
and a small [INAUDIBLE], which
would have been placed
over the embers
to contain the fire
before closing the curtain
panels of the bed
and retiring for the evening.
Whether the woman
in the bedstead
is resting or very ill,
the other woman is likely
charged with their care
and would tend to this fire,
that is if she can be disturbed
from such deep reverie.
It's deceptively simple,
this picture.
As I study this work
and consider the 38 or so
paintings assigned to Jacob
Vrel, I'm floored.
I'm astonished by their beauty,
their complexity
but, at the same time,
their simplicity
and the charged psychological
atmosphere he evokes.
Yet, Vrel has been largely
ignored and often marginalized
in the vast troves of literature
dedicated to the art
of the northern Baroque period.
Ironically, contemporary
scholars of 19th century art
have acknowledged
Vrel's significance, most
recently in the current
exhibition of Danish artist,
Hammershoi,
at the Jacquemart-André
in Paris--
an entire essay of the catalog,
in fact, which should arrive
shortly.
Vrel's palette, often muted,
has even been compared
to the pale gray and rosy tones
later employed by Whistler.
While 19th century artists may
have recognized Vrel's
contributions,
scholars and critics
of this period
were far from generous
in their assessment
of this painter.
Backhanded compliments are
the rule rather than
the exception,
admiring his charming naivety.
In order to place Vrel's work
in context, I quickly realized
a certain objectivity was
required.
And one rather
significant obstacle
stood in the way of this.
Johannes Vermeer may not
appreciate the label obstacle.
But in light of countless
exhibitions, publications,
and a steady stream of frenzied
fans worldwide eager
for the experience to stand
in this sacred space before his
paintings, I hope Vermeer will
not mind that we briefly set him
aside to examine the mysterious
Vrel, whose mature works,
in fact, predate Vermeer's.
After Vermeer's rediscovery
in the 19th century
and the ensuing pandemonium,
he might appreciate a short rest
and allow a spotlight to shine
briefly upon an artist whose
obscurity has not been unveiled
just yet.
OK, I admit that I use
the illustrious name Johannes
Vermeer in the title of today's
lecture to lure many of you
here.
Whether Vermeer knew Vrel,
whether there is any influence
upon one another,
is not the goal of my research.
In fact, such questions really
compromise the objectivity
we need to consider Vrel.
In the eloquent words of one
scholar, "If anything, Vrel's
pensive images have offered us
a way of finding a slightly
different approach to deal
with artworks that stirred us
to move away
from interpretation,
out of a historical paradigm,
and toward a state of suspension
worth thinking can start.
What has been haunting art
history is perhaps not the ghost
of the past but the artworks'
capacity to philosophize,
to think.
If we decide to let Vrel's
paintings take the lead,
they, having waited for us so
long, might take us forward
by going backwards.
They might direct us
towards a rediscovery of art
history's
philosophical foundations,
forming a possible basis
for an emergent area
of philosophical art history,
invoked by Panofsky, yet
never systematically explored."
Such rare praise-- not for Vrel
but for the pursuit of Vrel
and the rewards one might reap--
was promising.
But allowing Vrel's paintings
to take the lead is exactly
my intention.
But the other JV seems to loom
everywhere,
impeding this objective.
Given the juxtaposition
of the Gallery's Vrels,
as you can see here on the far
right,
with the famed masterpieces
of Johannes Vermeer, you, too,
may be forgiven
if your recollection
of this work is hazy at best.
Perhaps you were jostled
about by other visitors struck
with Vermeer-mania.
Given the intimate quarters
of this gallery, you may also
be forgiven if you
or your companions
were reprimanded by the man
above, as these visitors were.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- You're
too close to the exibit.
Please step back.
[END PLAYBACK]
Eager to escape reprimand,
you may have made a beeline
for the large environment
of the adjacent gallery.
And in doing so, you may have
walked right
by this quiet, unassuming
painting.
The only definitive association
we can make between Vrel
and Vermeer here is one which
linked the painters together
long
after their respective deaths.
Sharing the same initials
and interest
in modest domestic interiors
and street scenes,
misattributions-- some
deliberate, others perhaps
unintentional--
were
common
in the late 19th and early
20th century.
The French journalist
and critic, Thore-Burger,
credited with much
of the rediscovery of Johannes
Vermeer
and the Dutch school of painting
in 1866, owned a number
of Vrel's works
which were attributed
to Vermeer.
But it was 20 years later when
the Dutch art historian, Abraham
Bredius, singled out Vrel.
Technical analysis
of other works by Vrel
reveal concerted attempts
by unscrupulous dealers
to forge Vermeer's name
and fetch prices unattainable
by Vrel.
Unfortunately, their attempts
to attribute Vrel's work
to Vermeer or Pieter de Hooch
took aim at one of Vrel's most
unique hallmarks.
You may have noticed
these small slips of paper
strewn across an otherwise
spotless floor.
Vrel often signed his name
on them.
In the case of this painting
at the Fondation Custodia
in Paris, they were scrubbed out
and inscribed, Pieter de Hooch,
a contemporary of Vermeer.
In some cases, Vrel signed
a piece of paper which was
nailed to the wall.
Here in the Paris example,
it may have also been signed.
But the paper was removed
all together.
The nail, however, remains.
Harsh criticism of our poor Vrel
dominates the 19th century
and well beyond.
Here's just a partial list
of some of the adjectives used
in describing Vrel's works--
moderately
talented, marginal and
idiosyncratic,
monochrome monotony used
to describe his color palette--
and one of my favorites,
the dully self-effacing
regularity of that line
of plates above the pelmet.
And I've looked very carefully
at these plates.
And there's a definite influence
from many, many regions,
perhaps as far as Scandinavia.
So I think they're anything
but dull.
Do I sense a bit of empathy
here?
Come on.
You know you're rooting
for the underdog.
Much of this commentary
is directed
at the formal painterly
qualities of his work,
commentary we might expect
from critics, connoisseurs,
collectors.
But let's consider criticism
of Vrel's themes,
that his interiors lack
narrative interest.
OK, the rooms are sparse.
We could admit that, especially
when we consider the vast array
of objects incorporated into so
many paintings of the period,
painters eager to showcase
their talents for patrons who
were, in turn,
eager to celebrate the glory
and splendor of the Golden Age
with conspicuous references
to the wealth of goods
available
to their independent and
prosperous nation--
one of many examples illustrated
here on the right.
But such uncluttered
compositions are one of the most
defining and celebrated
characteristics of Vermeer's
paintings.
Such sparse interiors allow
for broad surface planes
and a certain abstraction,
both of which
herald, for many, the roots
of artistic modernism.
So let's tuck Vermeer away
for a bit again
and discuss Vrel and his oeuvre.
There are roughly 38 to 40
paintings known and attributed
to Jacob Vrel.
One half of these
are street scenes,
wonderful works.
Like Vrel's interior scenes,
they are quiet.
People move about with purpose
or converse quietly
on the streets of towns we
cannot identify--
more on that later.
Two church interiors have been
attributed to Vrel and one
drawing, which I was
unfortunately
unable to reproduce here.
We will return to the theme
of the church in the hotbed
of Protestant reform
and religious intolerance
in the Netherlands
just a bit later.
Woman in an Interior
is one of about 19
domestic interior scenes
comprising the other half
of Vrel's artistic output.
They are almost exclusively
women, women engaged
in a household task,
tending to the infirm--
as in the gallery's picture--
or tending to children,
in this case delousing a child,
a theme repeated often
by later painters like Pieter de
Hooch here on the right--
or tending to the fire.
Consistently, women are
represented whose attention
is focused entirely on something
or someone else--
a book.
A disturbance or event has
brought this woman
to the window.
Or, as with this example
in Brussels, has her rifling
through a drawer in search
of something,
preoccupied entirely
in this task
and entirely unaware
of the viewer.
And in perhaps the most jarring
and immediate of his works,
this one woman's attention
is understandably wholly focused
on the ghost-like figure
of a young child
appearing on the other side
of the leaded window,
so much so that she tips
her chair precariously
towards the window
sill, completely oblivious
of the viewer
or even the room in which she
occupies as she tries to make
sense of what she's seen.
All of these pictures
project a sense of intimacy,
even if we, as viewers, are not
acknowledged.
This is an intimacy
unlike the later Dutch genre
painters, in which the viewer is
more of an active participant,
where the door is flung open,
and the figure responds in shock
to the intrusion
or whose
architectural perspective
leads
our eye through an entrance hall
into the action
and then allows us to stay
and investigate.
OK, clearly the couple
on the left
are getting the parrot drunk.
But our eye then leads us
into another room.
And then, our visual curiosity
satisfied, the eye rests
upon a terminal spot, often
a window or door returning
to the street.
Satisfied it has completed
its journey, the eye can move on
to something else.
If it is the eye of an art
historian, it will return
to the painting, this time
with the objective of landing
on a variety of elements, which,
either on their own
or in concert with one another,
convey meaning.
The art historian is consumed
with interpreting these elements
to package and deliver
a satisfying iconographic scheme
contrived by the artist--
or not-- often ripe
with ambiguity but, nonetheless,
an invitation to the viewer
to linger, consume, interpret,
exit, and return at any time.
As Elizabeth Honig has
convincingly demonstrated,
Vrel affords us no fulfillment
in the process of vision.
These subjects are
without objects of desire.
We are trapped in Vrel's work.
In some way, this inspires
a sense of disquietude,
an uneasiness.
We cannot decipher what may have
brought this woman
to the window.
Her back is to us,
and she has vacated the space
psychologically by means
of her position, her head tilted
and peering to the side,
her energy and attention
entirely redirected.
On the right, the boy is not
unlike our young nurse caught
in reverie.
But the fact that we are not
privileged to the object
of their desire, the fact that
we do not receive such a warm
welcome
by the picture's inhabitants,
that we cannot choose to focus
on an array of objects, symbols,
that we are not afforded
a deeper perspective does not
dissuade-- me, at least-- from
wanting to stay, to stay
and contemplate.
Vrel's work gives us
no profound sense
of satisfaction,
visual or otherwise.
It's quiet but disquieting.
In fact, the figures
such as our young nurse
or the little boy do not allow
us to penetrate their psyche.
It does not mean we walk away
from them.
Again, Vrel challenges us
and makes us want to stay.
The Gallery's Vrel, one
of a number of Vrel scenes
in which a young woman is
charged with the responsibility
of maintaining watch
over another woman who is ill,
resting in a bedstead
similar to the one constructed
in our painting.
I should be careful in assigning
too much iconographic importance
to these women tucked away
in the recesses of the bedstead,
especially as there is no figure
in the bedstead of the San Diego
version of this theme.
The Antwerp variation, which
is on the right,
reveals a patient.
But she's rather awkwardly
propped up in a manner
suggesting Vrel was
either experimenting
with a perspectival challenge
of including a figure basically
painted in the wall,
and/or he added her later.
And while the Gallery's
composition on the left
affords a more generous view
of the woman in the bedstead,
her profile reveals little
about her age or condition.
And her features
are indistinctly rendered.
I began to look at these scenes
and compare
compositional elements which are
removed or added to discern
variations in his style.
And I quickly realized that such
an exercise is, at this point,
futile.
Sure, it would be
nice to establish a more
definitive date for this work.
But would that really shed
any light on Vrel
and his contributions?
Frustrated by the lack
of progress I was making--
and because I am and always will
be a medievalist at heart--
I began looking
at possible compositional
precedents for works featuring
the care of the sick.
After all, The Journal
of the American Medical
Association found the Gallery's
Vrel significant enough to grace
the cover of this 2004 issue.
The theme of illness,
its treatment,
and its pictorial expression
in the art of Europe
is, as one would expect,
a vast treasure trove for anyone
interested in the history
of medicine.
And as later genre painters soon
discovered,
it was a great source
of entertainment.
Far removed
from the quiet intimacy
of Vrel's interior, doctors--
quacks, as they were often
called--
hold vials of urine
for our inspection
with mischievous grins,
a twinkle in their eye,
and a generally condescending
demeanor towards their patients.
Women elegantly attired
in ermine-trimmed velvet coats
who collapse weekly--
the diagnosis, love sickness.
Vrel's presentation is far more
straightforward and serious
and much more
representative
of the late medieval pictorial
tradition of placing the patient
in a bed, not a bedstead here
but a distinct architectural
space where he or she is
attended to by one
or more servants.
Like Vrel's patient,
these figures are often almost
completely covered by a blanket.
The head and upper torso
is visible.
And occasionally, a hand or arm
is resting on top of the covers.
The fireplace, in a strikingly
similar configuration
to the late medieval convention,
illustrated in the center page
from [INAUDIBLE]
and most famously
in the February scene of
[FRENCH], actively burns
in Vrel's interior,
ensuring the room was
warm enough for the patient.
And I should note here
that Vrel's young woman may be
daydreaming, not tending
to the fire.
But she is far more modestly
presented
than her late medieval
counterpart on the far right,
who's sort of lifting her skirt
to take
in the warmth of the hearth.
The hand of this patient
is significant, as Wayne Franits
has demonstrated, indicating
the severity of the illness
with limp wrists.
Bulwer's Chirologia, published
in this period, illustrates
this gesture.
But such depictions, common
in herbal and medicinal traces
of the late Middle Ages
and their influence on Vrel,
while very interesting, cannot
contribute much, at least
at this point.
I then considered the theme
of feminine occupations.
Nearly all of Vrel's interiors
represent women
in various domestic activities,
including tending to the sick.
There are many representations
of the Dutch women in home.
And I will show you some
of the best from the Gallery's
collection.
De Hooch paints a woman beaming
at her young daughter with pride
as she folds the linens.
The floors sparkle.
And her diligence in keeping
a tidy home is well-documented.
But distractions abound, namely
visiting soldiers, alcohol,
tobacco, and/or parrots, who
pull these women away
from their tasks.
Treatises published
in this period--
by men, of course--
define these roles,
glorify these roles,
and assure these women they are
really very truly happy
in such roles.
Enigmatic as Vrel remains, I
don't see the value or relevance
in attempting to assign
complex layers
of symbolic meaning
to the women's tasks
in the home.
Not only has so much been
published on this topic
in general,
but given the intensely
self-absorbed nature
of the figures in his work,
I would not speculate upon
their feelings just yet, anyway.
Whether moving
through the streets with purpose
like this woman or frantically
rummaging through the drawer
of the Brussels painting,
these figures are inaccessible.
They are preoccupied, too
busy to think
about gender-defined roles,
really.
They're on the move.
The circulation of a set
of early engravings produced
by a female artist, Geertruydt
Roghman, may shed some lights
on Vrel's women, at least
in their compositional
arrangement and attire,
specifically here in this print,
which reveals
a striking similarity
to the Vienna painting.
On the other hand,
if we acknowledge Roghman's
early influence, we can then say
that she dressed the pope.
So, where now?
Biography should be the word
in blinking lights.
But in the case of Jacob Vrel,
we simply don't have it--
nada.
We don't even know how to spell
his name.
Here is a list-- and this is not
a complete list--
of possible variations
of the spelling
of his first and last name.
So this is just one
of the many challenges.
We do not know when or where
Jacobus Vrel was born,
where he worked,
or where he died.
He may not even have been Dutch,
which will make it somewhat
difficult to publish this entry
in the Systematic Catalog
of Dutch paintings.
The following are a number
of regions which have been
proposed, argued, and rejected--
Harlem, Delft, Amsterdam and
in Flanders, Brussels
and Antwerp.
There have been
some impressive, clearly
exhaustive, attempts to connect
Vrel to these cities
and regions.
And scholars have used two
methods to determine where he
might be from.
Comparative analysis
of architectural details,
facades, rooftops, gables,
windows, doors, materials,
brick-laying patterns,
and urban topography
has been undertaken in an effort
to make a stylistic match
and connect Vrel to Delft,
Harlem, Antwerp,
among many other regions.
This has been largely
unsuccessful.
And it's apparent Vrel has taken
some license,
played with a number
of architectural styles,
and produced something
of a hodgepodge.
Archives containing
the citizenship
and artistic guilds
of these cities
have been searched exhaustively
with no results.
So, what do we have?
We have the Archduke Leopold
Wilhelm of Austria, governor
to the Spanish Netherlands
at the court of Brussels.
An avid collector
and connoisseur, the archduke
employed the Antwerp painter,
David Teniers II,
to act as his agent and curator.
Teniers, a Flemish painter,
whose genre scenes like this one
located upstairs in the Dutch
Cabinet Galleries,
profiled
the less-affluent members
of society who frequented
watering holes such as this one.
This is one of the greatest
paintings,
I think, in the Cabinet
Galleries.
He was a prolific painter who
produced countless genre scenes
for an eager and demanding
market.
In the years
before the Austro-Prussian War
forced the archduke to leave
Brussels
and to take residence in Vienna,
he and Teniers collected works
on a massive scale.
I illustrate one of a number
of his [INAUDIBLE] or Cabinet
curiosities,
in which the archduke proudly
exhibits his collection
in Vienna,
the extensive collections
with the subject
of a systematic inventory
in 1659.
Here in this inventory,
we are rewarded
with the documentation of three
of Vrel's paintings.
Importantly, this inventory
records the date of 1654
for the painting on the left.
This work, like so many which
were stored in the Stolberg
Gallery of Hofburg Palace,
comprises much of today's
collection of the [INAUDIBLE]
Museum.
And here is the Stolberg Gallery
today, whose collection now
comprises Flying Lipizzaners
from the Spanish Riding School.
I know it's not much biography--
a drop, really--
but a reliable date of 1654
for the Vienna Vrel
is important, because it's
an attribution which
is original to the 17th century.
So I return to Vrel's works
and the figures,
hoping they might inspire
something.
I have read that Vrel's figures,
through their anonymity,
lack narrative interest.
The process of vision,
as I discussed earlier, in which
a subject's gaze should be
directed to
and satisfied
by an external object,
is not fulfilled.
But does this make his figures
any less compelling?
On the contrary--
I believe it makes Vrel
and the inhabitants
of both its interior and street
scenes more compelling, much
more.
This disquiet, this uneasiness
the viewer may feel
in the interiority of his
paintings, this psychological
barrier created by vision which
cannot be completed,
the absorption of the figures
in their tasks, their refusal
to grant us access
to their activity, to the focus
of their attention,
or to the thoughts running
through their minds is,
in my opinion, fascinating.
It may also be dangerous,
dangerous because it compels me
to create a narrative for him,
for the figures in his work--
yes, but also for the figure
of Vrel as a person
and a painter.
Indulge me for just one moment
in a very non-scientific
experiment, one which really has
no basis in fact,
as we have so very little facts
about this artist.
Could Vrel's characters,
full of anonymity,
lacking specificity, barring
entry to the compositions
in which they are painted
in fact
reflect a different narrative,
a narrative illustrating
the events of Vrel's own life
to which he was witness?
Vrel's young woman here
is contemplative.
She is thoughtful.
Her gaze is somewhat wistful,
somewhat resigned.
Is the woman in that bedstead
dying or merely resting?
Is the white, filmy substance
enveloping her merely
an inept attempt to position
this figure more firmly
into the recess of the bedstead,
as we have seen
with the other variations?
Or is she a fading presence,
enveloped in this strained gaze
like the form of the child,
who appears on the other side
of this window--
the painting on the right?
If we could see her face,
we might be inclined to say,
she looks like she's seen
a ghost.
From the tilting of the chair
at such a precarious angle,
from her body language,
I don't think we need to see
her face to determine this.
We are trapped in the narrative.
We are participating
in the narrative
as the woman is thrown
completely off guard, struggling
to make sense of what she sees.
Our experience of vision
is, on the contrary,
rewarded here.
This young child-- or this form
of a child--
is the object of her vision.
And we, too, are involved.
We participate.
I wonder if we may even
be invited to participate,
to confirm that what she sees
is not merely
a figment of her imagination.
This work and this woman,
in particular, have been
impossible to ignore.
I cannot shake it from my mind.
Here, I believe,
is where the viewer really has
an opportunity to participate.
Can we not participate
with empathy?
There is inexplicable grief
in the figure of this woman.
We don't need to see her tears
or the look of anguish
on her face.
Call Vrel's figures
squat and ill-proportioned,
fine.
But don't call them lacking
narrative interest, please.
Look at these works,
and suspend your disbelief
for a moment.
So just go with this.
Something is taking place.
Something important has drawn
this woman to the window.
Something motivates this woman--
perhaps the same woman--
to rifle through the drawers
with purpose.
Look at the people
on the streets.
They do engage.
They do interact with one
another.
But this is not
lighthearted banter.
Their conversations are
meaningful but quiet.
It appears that the woman here
may be informing these men.
Maybe she has news, an update.
Returning to this work,
the baby's cradle
and the woman's anguish
initially prompted me to think,
perhaps this mother has lost
her child,
especially as the child
or the ghost of this child
seems to return and engage her
from the other side,
so to speak--
twice, actually-- both of these
works.
One of the nurse interiors,
revealing a more generous
depiction of an alert patient,
features two young woman
attending to her, one younger
and one older,
as well as a baby
invisible in the cradle.
Assuming the young woman
in the bedstead is the mother
and assuming she is
the same woman delousing
her child in both
of these scenes,
it seems she recovers and raises
more than one child, as
evident by the figure
of the boy, his loop discarded,
gazing wistfully
at the courtyard outside.
In fact, when we return
to the National Gallery
and Antwerp pictures--
the center is the Gallery,
and on the far right
is in Antwerp--
the theme of caring for the sick
is altogether different.
The woman in the earlier scene
on the left--
dare I say I think it's earlier,
but I really do think it is--
is propped up in recovery.
She faces the window
and embraces the warm daylight.
A mirror is hung
between the frame
of the windows.
Did this woman lose
not her granddaughter,
the infant in the crib,
but her daughter
in the bedstead?
Perhaps the woman
in the Gallery's painting
is really not a nurse.
Maybe she's a relative
or sister.
Could this relative then
be charged with the care
of the children
after the death of the mother?
Her nephew, if so, is not gazing
out the door longing
to go outside and play.
He's discarded his toy.
Perhaps he is thinking
about his mother,
contemplating her death
in a similar vein
as this woman gazing out
the window as she tends
to her dying sister.
And we might as well keep going
with this.
As the grandmother, alone here,
is visited by her daughter,
perhaps--
appearing not as she did
before her death
but as she did as a child.
Alone in her old age,
the grandmother retreats
to the safety and warmth
of the fireplace, tending to it,
staring at it, and propped up
against it
in a melancholic slumber
with the cat at her feet.
And if any of this
is even remotely possible, who
is Vrel?
What is his role?
Is he the father
of the young woman who passed
away watching helplessly
as his daughter is taken
from him?
Does he recognize the grief
of his wife will never cease?
Is he conveying his inability
to participate in so many
of these scenes, at least
to participate emotionally?
If the other figures are so
distant, so inaccessible,
is it because they are not
accessible to him?
Is this
the psychological and painted
barrier from which he witnesses
these tragic events?
While this poses
a fascinating narrative,
without any biographical
details,
it's impossible to confirm
or reject with any certitude.
And so in the
yet-to-be-completed narrative
tracing my research in so many
different directions, I can
posit only one firm conclusion.
To make
any meaningful contribution
to the literature devoted
to Vrel, it is not
enough to push Vermeer out
of the limelight.
It is not enough to dismiss
the derogatory summations
of Vrel's work.
Comparative analysis of Vrel's
style on the details
of his composition don't really
place him in context.
Tracing possible sources
of influence upon him or by him
has been undertaken
and really only reveals he
could be in a number of cities.
Without further biography,
will he remain on the other side
of the window,
inaccessible to all of us?
And without biography,
with no record of his existence
in the citizenship
or guild records,
how can we confirm that he truly
was an artist, not a Sunday
painter,
as some scholars have posited?
But why would an amateur painter
regularly repeat
specific themes, making only
minor changes in the arrangement
of details, if he had no patron?
And how could the work
of an amateur have made its way
into the archduke's collection?
In the short period in which
the archduke's collections grew
substantially in Brussels,
there may be some clue.
I'd like to take more of a look
at the role played by his agent
and curator, David Teniers.
How would have Teniers locate it
and obtain his works?
The archives of Brussels
and Antwerp,
like those
of the northern Netherlands,
have been exhaustively searched.
And no record of Vrel
can be found.
Is there something in Teniers'
work of this period that might
inform us?
The appearance
of the Capuchin monks
in a number of Vrel's street
scenes has prompted
some scholars to argue
against his activity
in the Protestant North.
And you can see them here
on the right.
They always appear in two
with these little pointed hats.
But this order was generally
tolerated in the North,
as long as the monks went
about their business
as quietly, as they certainly
do here.
And it does not preclude
the possibility
that, like the compilation
of architectural styles
in his street scenes,
Vrel merged a number
of elements, possibly based
on travel, memory.
But the Capuchin monks
are helpful in one respect,
as they stand here to the left
of the bakery,
perhaps waiting for alms.
And it led me to think more
about these bakeries, especially
this one
with the figure of a man peering
out from the window.
One scholar suggested that Vrel,
as an artist,
would have identified
with the baker.
But I can't help but wonder
if Vrel was an actual baker.
If he were a baker, he would
have been part
of the baker's guilds ,
registered as both a citizen
and baker in the archives.
But if the German variation
on Jacob Vrel's name
is any indication, then perhaps
Vrel was not Flemish or Dutch
but German, as some scholars
have suggested.
It might explain a lot.
In fact, perhaps Vrel could have
sold his work regardless
of the guild to which he belong,
because he was German,
not Flemish or Dutch.
And again, I'd like to look more
at Teniers' role
as the agent and curator
to see if he was able to smuggle
some of these works
into the archduke's collection.
Regardless, it widens the window
of opportunity
for archival research,
particularly in the area
of the North Rhine-Westphalia,
which is in close
proximity
to the artistic centers proposed
and rejected for Vrel's
citizenship.
As luck would have it,
I will be in Bonn
in several weeks.
I will search
the archival holdings, including
registries from both the bakers
and artist guilds
to cast a wider net.
Perhaps Vrel is not a baker.
Perhaps this was his father
or a family member.
Perhaps I can return
to this work with new insight,
Vrel's citizenship,
his existence for that matter--
perhaps not.
Perhaps my European colleagues
in their collaborative efforts
to present an exhibition
on Jacobus Vrel in 2020
will help us to understand
the enigma of Jacob Vrel.
At the very least, we can
embrace his contributions just
briefly uneclipsed by those
of Vermeer's.
Most importantly, as scholars,
museum visitors, as viewers, I
hope we can, at the very least,
participate in the process.
Thank you.
