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John Gardner owns The Concert. So the importance of the 1696 catalogue is indisputable. And now, after wading through this dry forest of figures and dates and haphazard or dogmatic attributions, we are at the fatal number, thirty-four only thirty-four authentic Vermeers in existence. Some one must be mistaken. Who owns the thirty-fifth Vermeer? I again ask.
In Holland at The Hague there are four Vermeers: The Toilette of Diana, the Head of a Young Girl, An Allegory of the New Testament, and the View of Delft. At the Rijks Museum, Amsterdam, there are four: The Milk Girl, The Reader, The Letter, and A Street in Delft. In the National Gallery, a young woman standing in front of her clavecin.
For them he was either practically unknown or else an imitator of Terburg, De Hooch, or Mieris, he whose work is never tight, hard, or slippery. The following list of thirty-four admittedly genuine Vermeers may clear up the mystery of the 1696 sale at Amsterdam. Remember that the authenticity of these works is no longer contested.
The latter is in the Altman collection; the former at Philadelphia, in Mr. Widener's gallery. But let us see how the wise doctors of paint dispute among themselves. How many Vermeers are there in existence, that is, known to the world, for there may be others, for all we know, hidden in the cabinets of collectors or sporting other names?
Old David Bles is here, and Blommers, De Bock, Bosboom, Valkenburg, Alma-Tadema, Ary Scheffer of Dutch descent Roelofs, Mesdag, Mauve, Jakob Maris, Jongkind, and some of the Frenchmen, Rousseau, Millet, Dupré, and others. The Six gallery is not so accessible as it was some years ago. No doubt its Rembrandts and Vermeers will eventually find their way into the Rijks Museum.
In Austria-Hungary there are two noble Vermeers; one in the private gallery of Count Czernin, the portrait of the painter, the other in the Museum of Budapest, the portrait of a woman, the latter as solidly modelled as any Hals I ever viewed. It is a masterpiece. In it he grazes perfection. The United States is, considering the brevity of the list, well off in Vermeers. At Boston Mrs.
I have enjoyed the privilege and pleasure of viewing the Widener Vermeers, and I believe that the Sleeping Servant she may not be intoxicated, a jug on the table being the only evidence; certainly her features are placid enough; besides, Vermeer did not indulge in paintings of low life as did Teniers, Ostrade, or Jan Steen is about the same period as The Merry Company, in the Dresden gallery, that is, if paint, texture, and arrangement of still-life be any criterion.
"I am a rich man, for a picture-dealer," said Vieyra, "but only national governments can afford to buy Vermeers nowadays." "But you picked it up from some corner, some attic, some stable " "Yes, I picked it up from a stable," said the collector. The actress laid her slender, burning fingers on his cool old hand. "Tell us tell us," she urged. "There is something different here."
There is the so-called portrait of the painter and his wife, two full-length figures; the Jolly Toper, half-length figure, large black hat, in the left hand a glass; and the insolent lute-player, a copy, said to be by Dirck Hals, the original in the possession of Baron Gustave Rothschild at Paris. And a fine copy it is. The three Vermeers are of his later enamelled period.
That would give the thirty-fifth to the Portrait of a Man in the Brussels Museum. Setting aside the two interiors and the second View of Delft as not being in the field of the authentic, there remain the Morgan and the Widener Vermeers. Which of the pair is the thirty-fifth Vermeer? They are both masterpieces, though the Morgan is blacker and has been overcleaned.
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