In his just lately printed biography of Johannes Vermeer, the UK artwork historian Andrew Graham-Dixon outlines how the patrons Maria de Knuijt and her husband Pieter Claesz van Ruijven commissioned a lot of the Dutch Previous Grasp’s works. The couple’s daughter, Magdalena Pieters van Ruijven, died on 16 June 1682 in the home referred to as the Golden ABC that she had shared together with her husband, a printer named Jacob Dissius, on the Nice Market Sq. in Delft. A notary clerk visited the home in 1683 with the intention to record Magdalena’s private possessions—and found a wealth of Vermeers.
Extract from Vermeer: A Life Misplaced and Discovered
Magdalena’s assortment, now develop into Jacob’s, contained not solely footage by Vermeer: moreover the 20 by his hand, 21 others are listed. However the notary’s clerk didn’t hassle to call the artists accountable for them, apart from in a single occasion, that of the marine portray by Jan Porcellis, which was hung along with an nameless panorama beside 11 Vermeers within the entrance room. No doubt the clerk took his lead from Magdalena’s widower, who should have been his information via the home.
All this was not simply out of the bizarre. It was distinctive. Many exceptional personal artwork collections have been fashioned within the Dutch Republic in the course of the seventeenth century, however such collections have been invariably bigger and extra eclectic than that housed inside The Golden ABC. None was constructed across the work of a single painter. Magdalena’s dad and mom had furthermore owned most of Vermeer’s work. The 20 footage in her loss of life stock quantity to just about two-thirds of his identified manufacturing.
The gathering was not solely distinctive in its nature however distinctive in the best way it was cherished and preserved. So long as it remained inside the household of its authentic house owners, it was by no means damaged up or diminished by half gross sales. For causes that stay unclear, following Magdalena’s loss of life Jacob was obliged to share her property along with his father, Abraham: a ruling to that impact was made by the commissioners of the Excessive Court docket of Holland on 18 July 1684. In consequence six of Vermeer’s work grew to become the property of Dissius the elder. It’s not identified whether or not Abraham Dissius ever took bodily possession of these six footage, or was merely content material with nominal possession of them. However Jacob acquired them again from his father, both by buy or inheritance, and saved them at The Golden ABC along with the others, for the remainder of his life. On the time of his loss of life in 1695 he had ensured that the gathering was nonetheless intact. Solely then was it dispersed.
Documentary proof reveals that Vermeer started working for the Van Ruijven household in about 1657, when he was in his mid-20s. For the subsequent 13 years he painted nearly all his footage for that household, and afterwards roughly gave up portray altogether. His relationship to his patrons was like none different that we all know of in his time, simply as his work are not like every other Dutch footage of the interval. It’s cheap to imagine that this isn’t a coincidence. There’s one other facet to the thriller of Vermeer: specifically his place in artwork historical past, or quite his lack of 1 till the mid-Nineteenth century. No different Previous Grasp as extremely considered he’s right now was ever forgotten for as lengthy. This might absolutely by no means have been the case had he not painted almost all of his footage for one household, and had that household not saved them so shut. For some 40 years, except an individual occurred to know Pieter Claesz van Ruijven or Maria de Knuijt, Magdalena Pieters van Ruijven or Jacob Dissius, it could have been tough to know a lot concerning the work of Johannes Vermeer.
So no surprise he was by no means as well-known as Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Gerrit Dou, Frans van Mieris or Aelbert Cuyp; no surprise that his title was neglected of the biographies of Dutch artists compiled within the seventeenth and 18th centuries; and no surprise that [the 19th-century art critic] Théophile Thoré, who rescued Vermeer from obscurity, described him as a person risen with out hint. The sample had been set early: for many of his life, and for 20 years afterwards, his artwork had been saved out of public view, apparently along with his keen cooperation.
• Andrew Graham-Dixon, Vermeer: A Life Misplaced and Discovered, Allen Lane, £30; printed this month within the US with W.W Norton & Firm, $45. © Andrew Graham-Dixon 2025
