9. Naturalness, enticing the viewers.

Part of an essay on Vermeer, brain channels, neural stimulus, visual perception and art appreciation

A 20,000-word essay on the interface between the fields of Vermeer, Art History and cognitive science, neuroscience and neuresthetics

written by Vermeer specialist, art historian Drs. Kees Kaldenbach, Amsterdam.

Chapters:

1) Foreword
2) Introduction and terminology. houding, perception of reality, realism, illusionism and trompe l’oeil
3) Understanding Vermeer’s Perception of Reality; a Discussion of Characteristics
4) Brain and colour
5) Form as registered by the brain
6) Facial recognition, depth, movement, fine vs broad
7) Using this knowledge in studying and appreciating Vermeer
8) Workshop matters, Painters’ Supplies, Palette, The fijnschilder style versus the loose style, fourteen Qualities listed by Philips Angel
9) Naturalness, enticing the viewers
10) Delft artists influencing Vermeer
11) Vermeers Early, Middle, Late period. Camera Obscura
12) Vermeer’s World of Interiors: a Reality or a Construction
13) Landmark Vermeer literature (in print on paper form)
14) Digital Art History Studies and Presentations on Questions - on Perception of Reality in Vermeer Paintings
15) External CD-Rom, DVD, film material on Vermeer
16) Selected Bibliography

Updated June 9, 2016. Updated 15 February 2017.

3.6. Naturalness in Genre Painting

In 1604 the term ‘schilderachtig’ was used in the Schilder-boeck by Carel van Mander (1548-1606). This term translates into English as ‘painterly’, referring to two separate qualities: on one hand the image that best demonstrates an artist’s painterly ability and at the other hand to describe those subjects fit for an artist, allowing for free imagination and invention. After the middle of the seventeenth century the term shifted in meaning and was used to denote painting those buildings and people marked by aging and weathering, subjects that did not fit in well with the tenets of the upcoming classicist painting. Later on the term ‘picturesque’ came to be associated with ‘schilderachtig’.[1]

Terminology used by contemporaries to describe seventeenth century Dutch painting differs from those terms, which we have used for the last century or so. Whereas we now tend to think of seventeenth century Dutch art in terms of areas of specializations such as ‘genre’, portraiture, landscape, history, the seventeenth century burgher grouped paintings into different categories as we may learn from inventories. There we find groups as: Still life [Stilleven], Young Ladies [Juffertjes], Galant companies [Gezelschapjes], Conversations [Conversaties], Character head [Tronie] , Brothel scene [Bordeeltje], Battle [Bataille].
In seventeenth century and early eighteenth century inventory lists we see Vermeer’s work indicated as a number of these terms, especially Juffertjes,

Our generic term ‘genre’ forms a later grouping, and refers to a wide range of paintings showing everyday scenes from Dutch life. These genre paintings, according to the present-day author Peter Hecht, served one main purpose: to appear as real as possible, and in comparing one particular master-pupil relationship Hecht concludes:
“…almost every step the younger painter [Frans van Mieris] took can plausibly be explained as part of a consistent search for a greater degree of naturalness and probability than his teacher [Gerard Dou] had ever achieved.” [2]

Increased naturalness of the scene was not Frans van Mieris’ only concern for improvement. In the process of purifying and simplifying the scene and reducing the over-crowded staffage often marring Dou paintings, Van Mieris succeeded in purifying the spatial lay-out by reduction of paraphernalia and bringing forward (almost into a photographic close-up) the main human figures within the painting, visually defining these as the central subject. In this respect Van Mieris has paved the way for much of Vermeer’s work.

At the end of his career as a writer on art, Lawrence Gowing labelled Vermeer a “Counterfeiter of Grace” capturing in these words both his strength to counterfeit reality and his ability to capture the soul.[3] In his important 1952 book, republished in 1997, he also used the term ‘counterfeit’ in the sense of pursuing appearances of a pure visual experience.[4]
“What do men call this wedge of light? A nose? A finger? What do we know of its shape? To Vermeer none of this matters, the conceptual world of names and knowledge is forgotten, nothing concerns him but what is visible, the tone, the wedge of light.”[5]
Obviously Gowing points here to such stunning details as the fused colour-patch representing both the sections of the nose and the cheek behind it, belonging to the Girl with the Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis). Here, Vermeer chose to negate the known division line between nose and cheek (a division line should have been there according to the conventions of line drawing and painting) but he lets reign supreme the single colour patch of paint, representing both areas with a detached impartiality – and there seems to be nothing like it in the art of painting by other masters.
Gowing sees the nature of Vermeer’s painting as opposed to trompe l’oeil painting. According to Gowing, Vermeer’s particular style is primarily derived from his study of what the eye learns from optical effects – thus what one sees, not what one mentally knows to be there,. Trompe l’oeil painters on the other hand strove towards a style-free, naturalistic tactility, an almost ‘photographic’ representation.[6]

In Officer and the Laughing Girl (Frick, NYC) Vermeer shows his almost hallucinatory bright vision of a heightened reality, a result of both of his painterly interest in the representation of material things and playing with luminosity, size, scale and perspective – it is quite overwhelming in that respect. In all of these respects this work surpasses the known paintings from his closest artistic kin and townsman Carel Fabritius (1622-1654).

Later on in his career Vermeer shifted his interest to the visual input / paint output encoding in a tile-like mosaic of interlocking shapes, their totality forming the outward appearance as he perceived it.

Painting should imitate nature and it must seduce, entice, deceive the eye. These bold statements come from an explicit self-definition of aims and aspirations of a painter from Leiden. It is found in Philip Angel’s treatise Lof der Schilder-konst, which was cited above in 14 separate requirement points for painters. His text had been presented as a speech in 1641 in the Leiden group of painters who were aspiring to found an official St Luke’s guild.[7] Angel keeps on stressing the dignity and venerability of the painters’ profession by referring time and again to examples from antiquity, his sources being the 1604 Schilder-boeck by Carel van Mander, and several works by the popular author Jacob Cats plus works by authors from antiquity.
Angel speaks of the arduous and expensive long-term educational requirements for becoming a painter. These cost are offset by good chances: time and again he emphasizes the value of his craft in that good money can be made from this profession. The latter argument may have been hammered in given the nature of his text – a plea-request for installing a local St Luke’s Guild. The request was granted by the town magistrates, and an official St Luke’s guild was indeed officially founded later on in 1641.

Angel comes close to using the term ‘reality’ when discussing the concept of close imitation by observation of the actual natural things. “waerneminghe van d’eyghen natuyrlike dingen”.[8]
The art of painting, according to Angel should both appeal and delight the eye. The best painters are inventive imitators of life, thus creating a valuable painting with an exceptional resemblance it to real life “uyt de ongewoone overeenkominge die het met het leven heeft”.
Painters can capture semblance of an object without being the object itself “schijn sonder sijn”, which is the decisive merit of the art of painting versus the art of sculpture.[9]

Angel even suggests that painters should try and imitate the difficult optical phenomenon of the blurring of turning wheels of a moving wagon. This is indeed a tricky affair, he states, but:

“Now many may suppose this characteristic to be much more difficult to follow than others; but as we are making semblances of life one should not spare some extra effort (if this brings one closer to natural things) even if one is unused to it, this may seem at first as hard to do.”[10]

In discussing point 6 (see above) he warns against erring, and advises painters to steer towards showing the true character of the nature of things, seeking it in nature which is so abundant and ever-changing, painted not out of artfulness but because of going for similitude.[11]

Another book author, the painter Arnold Houbraken (1660-1719) made a similar description of successful natural liveliness within paintings. When discussing the work of Allaert van Everdingen (1621-1675) he thinks he is a superior artist for his natural effects:
“Many praiseworthy paintings are shown in Amsterdam and elsewhere among the art lovers, witnessing forever that he was a great master in Art, not in a single part but sufficient generally; for one sees landscapes from his hand with animals and human figures painted so wonderful and beautiful, and tightly packed woods in which the eye sees no end in depth, and the _?birds?_ playful and wild, that they seem to move against the sky: and water falls and sea storms, whose breaking waves of sea water against the hard rock and the thinly moving spray are so naturally thin and have been observed so full of spirit that these pieces are passed as masterpieces…”[12]

Notes

[1] See Goedde in Franits 1997: 136. Lawrence A. Goedde considers the term ‘schilderachtig’ as bound up with the conventions of Dutch realism. He claims it is not an artless default style but a style developed by a separate school of painting itself, which consciously strove for a “nonrhetorical rhetoric” (see page 140).
[2] Hecht in Franits 1997: 91.
[3] Gowing 1997: 8-13.
[4] Gowing 1997: 25.
[5] Gowing 1997:19.
[6] Gowing 1997: 25.
[7] The full text is on Internet, on www.johannesvermeer.info, within the Digital Vermeer House.
[8] Sluyter in Franits, 82.
[9] Sluyter in Franits 1997: 81.
[10] Angel, p. 41. “Nu mochte vele oordelen dese eyghentlikheyt veel moeylicker te sijn om na te volgen, dan anders ; maer aenghesien wy na-bootsers van ‘t leven sijn, soo en moet men om wat meerder moeyten (alsmen de natuerlicke dingen daer mede nader by komt) niet achter laten ; oock soo en ist gheen meerder moeyte schoon het selve door de onghewoonte wel wat swaerder valt als anders, maer veel lichter.”
[11] Angel p 54. “Siet dan, wat het al vermach wel op de eyghenlijkheyt van de natuerlijcke dinghen te letten, men sal bevinden dat het niet alleen desen mis-slach ter zijden en sal doen setten…”
“Laet ons dit verlaten, grote Geesten, en verkiesen daer de meeste Lof door te bekomen is, soeckende de Natuyre die so overvloeyende in veranderlickheyt is, dat, wie de selve eygentlick na volght, noyt besloten en sal konnen werden, wie het ghemaeckt heft; of ten waer dat yemand het leven soo nae-quam, dat men moste besluyten om dat het selve soo eyghentlick, en niet min veranderlick was, van soo een Meester ghedaen te zijn, om datmen noyt te voren van sulcke na-by-kominghe nae ’tleven gehoort had’ dan van hem ; soo dat sulcx niet en weird besloten uyt sijn handelinghe, maer uyt de ongewoone over-een-kominge die het met het leven heft.”
[12] Houbraken 1753, book 2: 95. “Vele pryswaardige konststukken zyn tot Amsterdam en elders onder de konstlievenden verspreit, die altyd betuigen zullen dat hy een groot meester in de Konst geweest is, niet in een enkel deel, maar genoegzaam in ‘t algemeen; want men ziet Landschappen van hem, met Beestjes en Beelden zoo wonder fraai geschildert, en digt beplante bosschen, daar het oog door hun diepte geen eind aan ziet, en de getrotste meyen zoo spelende en dartel geschildert: dat zy zig tegen de lucht schynen te bewegen: en Watervallen, en Zeestormen, waar in de brandinge van ‘t Zeewater tegens de harde rotsen, en de dunne afstuivende sprenkelingen zoo natuurlijk dun, en geestig zyn waargenome dat de stukken voor meesterstukken mogen doorgaan…

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Written 2002-2003. Published online, July 17, 2011. Updated July 17, 2011.

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