Exhibition Review 'Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence'

Last week I went on a day trip to Cambridge to view the Vermeer exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum ‘Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence’.  For as long as I can remember Vermeer has been one of my favourite artists.  The calm, intriguing beauty of Vermeer’s works have always captivated me, whilst my fascination has been encouraged, unashamedly, by Tracy Chevalier’s book Girl with a Pearl Earring (well worth a read) and the visually stunning film made after it.  Research into the Vermeer forger Han van Meergeren, who exploited the Nazi craze for Vermeer paintings, only cemented my interest in the artist.  The infamous art forger tricked thousands, including Reichmarschal Hermann Goering, into believing his paintings were real Vermeers (amusing when you look at them now, Supper at Emmaus for example is so unlike Vermeer’s style that it is astonishing curators and art critics were fooled).*

Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

It is fair to say therefore, that I entered the Fitzwilliam’s stunning façade eager to see 4 of the known 36 paintings by Johannes Vermeer, and indeed to learn of the ‘secrets’ Vermeer’s women concealed. 

The exhibition was squeezed into one long room with dividers to separate it into different sections.  It was heaving.  I am not sure what the crowds at the Leonardo exhibition are like (I have yet to brave a trip there) but my guess is even the two Virgin of the Rocks do not have as many visitors crammed round them as The Lacemaker had. 

The Lacemaker, c. 1669-1670, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
The Lacemaker is unsurprisingly the most popular painting in the
exhibition as it is the first time it has been exhibited in the UK.

Negotiating my way around prams, tourists and Vermeer worshippers to get up close to the works, I was rewarded with the calm beauty of his paintings (for all of five seconds before the bloke behind me shoved his walking stick in my back to move me on).  The delicacy and infinite precision of Vermeer’s works, enhanced most probably by his use of the camera obscura, create wonderfully evocative images of women in interiors.  Seated round virginals, weaving lace, these women, focused on their domestic tasks, are captured in an exquisite combination of light and colour.  Other works by Vermeer’s contemporaries (28 in total) were also a delight, the atmospheric chiaroscuro of Cornelis Bisschop being a particular highlight for me (excuse the pun).

Jan Steen, A Woman at her Toilet, c. 1661-65
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The art works themselves, therefore, made the journey to Cambridge more than worthwhile.  What disappointed me about the exhibition (apart from the crowds) was the display of information, or rather, lack-there-of.  Very small plaques contained rather obvious information about the chosen works.  I found myself gazing at a captivating and mysterious image such as Jan Steen’s A Woman at her Toilet and then reading a few lines on how it shows a woman in an interior with a dangling stocking.  I know this, I can see this.  What I don’t know is why is the woman pulling off her stocking?  What does it represent?  What do we know about the artist’s relationship with women? Who was the model?  I left the exhibition feeling that the curators had kept Vermeer and his contemporaries’ secrets to themselves.  

This is a problem that is by no means exclusive to the latest Fitzwilliam exhibition.  More and more curators are designing exhibitions with minimum text to accompany the works of art.  Not wanting to ‘distract’ the viewers from the images with (god forbid) interesting information, the curators want the pictures to ‘speak for themselves’.  What they often forget is that the majority of exhibition goers attend exhibitions for two reasons, to look and to learn. 

Whilst I (as an art history student) probably have a thirst for more detailed information than the average visitor, the absence of any real narrative is somewhat frustrating when you consider the huge amount of research that goes into exhibition preparation; a quick flick through the exhibition catalogue in the gallery shop is evidence of this.  Whilst the exhibition catalogue for the Vermeer exhibition is only £15, I feel that purchasing it should be an added enhancement rather than a necessity for understanding and enjoying the exhibition.  If the curators know answers to such questions as ‘How did Vermeer, Pieter de Hooch and other contemporaries interact in an artistic context?  How popular were images of women in interiors for the general Dutch public?  Did the Eighty Years War have an impact on the demand for domestic interiors?’ or even such basic questions as ‘Who bought these paintings? Why? Why did the artists paint women?’ then it seems ludicrous for all of these answers to be withheld from the public. Indeed, you can always decide to look away from any extra writing you feel distracts from the paintings, but it is rather harder to conjure up information yourself.

Despite this, ‘Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence’ is a stunning visual display of Dutch art, with a wonderful selection of paintings displaying women in domestic interiors.  Furthermore, to see The Lacemaker in the UK for free is probably a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I recommend anyone who hasn’t been to go in its final week (ends January 15^th), just take a couple of Vermeer books with you…

Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence Mellon Gallery, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/ 5 Oct-15 Jan 2012

* The Courtauld Institute has its own van Meergeren. The Procuress, thought to be a seventeenth-century copy of Dirck van Baburen, was confirmed by the TV series Fake or Fortune to be by the forger (full details see http://www.arthistorynews.com/articles/418_Connoisseurship_in_Crisis?).