Do you regret not having been able to go to Amsterdam to admire the exceptional retrospective dedicated to Johannes Vermeer (sold out from the start, 650,000 visitors in total)? Go quietly to the Custodia Foundation. Although located in the heart of Paris, a stone’s throw from the National Assembly, this haven of culture is still mainly frequented only by insiders.
Specializing in the arts of the Dutch Golden Age, it is currently showing the work of Jacobus Vrel. This painter still named here and there in the archives Jakob Fröll or J. Frel, Vrelle or even Veerlle, is today, despite all the research – gathered in a first monograph in the spring of 2021 – very poorly documented.
But, in the 19th century, several of his oils were considered to be from the hand of the “Sphinx of Delft”. And not only because the same initials “J” and “V” were worn as a signature. The art of this fifteen-year-old elder is very close to that of his famous younger brother. Théophile Thoré-Bürger, the man who rediscovered the latter in 1866, wrote of the former: “It is Vermeer to be mistaken, even up close.” In fact, take the alley theme. Of these Dutch urban views, with simple and anonymous people, painted in a restrained chromatic range – brick red, whitewash and sky blue -, and with proto-Mondrian geometric accents, we have none less than eight on the picture rails of the first room. They seem to be an extension of the famous Ruelle visible in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, a singular composition in Vermeer’s corpus.
A genre hatched here. And we can guess from careful observation that one buyer or one sponsor was competing with each other at the time with minute realistic details. Here, on a roof, a nest of storks where before Vrel had represented a chimney. Here a closed shutter, there an open one. Here two men conversing, there a housewife carrying a shopping basket.
The interior scenes, brought together in a second room, offer the same combinatory game of elements. With, in addition, a typical lateral daylight, filtered by the small panes of high windows characteristic of constructions in the United Provinces. In very uncluttered rooms in apartments or small houses, the accessories – a cloth, a bowl, an abandoned hoop, a fire tong, some low chair with three or four legs – a reader or a seamstress is absorbed in her task. As if out of all contingency, extracted from the passage of time… Others, in cotton caps and heavy aprons, young or less, dream alone. Unless, no, a kid surprises one from outside, on the other side of a translucent window from where he was watching this other world. The essentially feminine one of intimacy and tranquillity.
The diffuse melancholy, that identical to The Reader at the Window, this same latent boredom, this same calm with a hint of strangeness, then gives way in Vrel to the anecdote. Which, with its less elaborate technique, certainly makes it less interesting. But also really lovely. In short, there is less pure poetry and virtuosity here. But often humor and, omnipresent, an undeniable naive charm.
In the 19th century, some of his works were made up by unscrupulous dealers, thus expecting, if they offered them as Vermeers, higher profits. Hence the difficulty of defining the corpus today. Because of course, no date of birth or death could be found for Vrel. And only one of his paintings is dated on the other 42 wooden panels given to him today (five of them being unlocated, only known from old black and white photographic reproductions).
A recent battery of dendrochronological analyzes has just delivered this crucial information: Vrel was active long before Vermeer or even Pieter de Hooch, the most appreciated Delft artist at the time. It is therefore a precursor, perhaps even a model to be surpassed for the father of the Girl with a Pearl Earring. But by no means a follower.
The foundation has managed the feat of bringing together half of its production. And in the third and last space, it is placed next to very similar works, such as those of Job Berckheyde, the cantor of the canals of Haarlem or Egbert van der Poel, a painter specializing in market scenes. The loans come of course from the Netherlands (in addition to the Rijksmuseum, the Mauritshuis in The Hague has notably taken Gerard ter Borch’s exquisite Lice Hunt on tour) but also from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna as well as several private collections.
In passing, you will notice that the acquisitions of the Fondation Custodia are among the finest and most judicious. Like that of this extremely rare drawing by the artist. Since none of Vermeer are known, he indirectly indicates the creative process common to all masters of fine painting of the time. Of course it is not worth the one exhibited nearby and due to Rembrandt. Where we see the first companion of this one, Saskia, undoubtedly bedridden during one of her pregnancies, unless it is because of tuberculosis which will strike her down in 1642. It is not worth this sheet either ink, gouache and brown wash from the Rijksmuseum. Attributed to Nicolaes Maes, it shows in three-quarters of the back a woman leaning on an opening. Could it be a prototype or, more likely, a pattern taken from Vrel? We are always not sure of anything which contributes to the charm.
In an essay published in 1968, the art historian Jean Clair nicknamed Vrel “the Vermeer of the poor”. It was just albeit unfortunate. We had to wait for this exhibition for us to be fully aware of its artistic richness.
“Jacobus Vrel, enigmatic precursor of Vermeer” until September 17 at the Fondation Custodia, 121, rue de Lille (Paris 7th). Hirmer catalog, 256 pages, €39.90. Also on site are the contemporary drawings by Rein Dool. Tel.: 01 47 05 75 19.
