Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window – Poem

Afternoon light falls

on ochres and reds and pale golds.

Velvets and linens and wools

sway heavily in the light

breeze that passes through

this bower of abundance.

The letter she holds has been read before.

Pulling taut the wrinkled sheet she reads

again what she could now recite.

The word on which her gaze falls so intently

reach from the page like a familiar touch,

tender and faint as the delicate script

bleached by the light of this autumn afternoon.

Perhaps it is from an absent husband, running

the trade that brought these rugs a thousand miles,

and bought this fruit, best of harvest, for her table.

Perhaps not. It may be she who has gone away.

Given in marriage beyond what she knew to hope for,

taken from the sound of known feet on the village path,

from a circle of friends gathered to gossip

at the brookside after the day’s tasks,

from the mother who writes her now, wondering

whether, in her grand house, among her servants

and soft garments, she still cares for news from home.

Not even her mother knows how much

she cares: how she is glad that the old, blind cobbler’s

young apprentice is kind to him, and repairs

without a word the vagrant stitches on sole and tongue,

and calls him father; that her sister is learning

to weave and has taken her place reading verses

after the evening meal; that the little hunchback still rides

on the peddler’s cart and laughs back

at the children who laugh at him.

The streets of this city are silent as her ear strains

for familiar sounds. No woman’s voice summons her

in this household where, as yet, there is no babe

to cry or nurse to scold. The man who adores her

knows her only as his lady.

None of them knows how she would like, some evenings,

to lay her coiffed head on a breast broader and softer than her own;

to bake, morning, in a kitchen crowded with bowls and chatter;

to strip off her fine-stitched shoes and wade in a muddy brook

in secret, skirts gathered, with a giggling friend

in the heat and falling light of the afternoon.

In Quiet Light: Poems on Vermeer’s Women by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Elizabeth Mansfield

This author, ELizabeth Mansfield, mentioned the painting I chose, “Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window” in her book “Art, history and its institutions”, as we can see in this picture:

This information is given to us by Google. The rights are reserved, but I wanted to show you how this painting is also mentioned not only on the Web but also in different books.

In Google Books. Last time retrieved 17 May 2009, from GoogleBooks .

Wikipedia and “Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window”.

What Wikipedia says about this painting:

Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window is a painting finished in 1657 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie of Dresden.

The picture was acquired in 1724 by August III, elector of Saxony, together with a number of other paintings bought in Paris. The seller threw in the picture as a present, to sweeten the deal. It was then attributed to Rembrandt, and the ascription was subsequently weakened to “manner” or “school of”. In 1783, it was engraved as a work by Govaert Flinck. The name “Van der Meer from Delft” occurred for the first time in a catalog dating from 1806, to be changed back to Flinck in 1817. From 1826 to 1860, the appellation was altered to Pieter de Hooch. It is only since 1862 that the correct identification obtains. The only Dutch provenance that could possibly apply is the sale Pieter van der Lip, Amsterdam, 1712, no. 22, “A Woman Reading in a Room, by van der Meer of Delft fl 110″. Unfortunately, the text is not specific enough to distinguish it from the one at the Rijksmuseum, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.

The above underlines the difficulties inherent to the establishment of Vermeer’s catalog. Not a single work can be traced back to the painter’s studio, nor are there any letters or contracts extant. The task of attribution rests squarely upon the shoulders of the individual critic, which explains the multiplicity of divergent opinions. In this painting, a young woman stands in the center of the composition, facing in profile an open window to the left. In the foreground is a table covered with the same Oriental rug encountered in the Woman Asleep. On it is the identical Delft plate with fruit. The window reflects the girl’s features, while to the right the large green curtain forms a deceptive frame. She is precisely silhouetted against a bare wall that reflects the light and envelops her in its luminosity.

We are here confronted with one of the salient aspects of Vermeer’s sensibility and originality. It is the stillness that stands out, the inner absorption, the remoteness from the outer world. She concentrates entirely upon the letter, holding it firmly and tautly, while she absorbs its content with utmost attention.

In the technique, the artist avows again Rembrandtesque derivation. He paints in small fatty dabs to model the forms, and obtains the desired effects by means of impasto highlights opposed to the deeper tonalities – just as the master from Leyden was wont to do. The painting is relatively large, and the smallness of the figure as opposed to its surroundings stresses immateriality and depersonalization. Vermeer considerably changed the composition in the course of execution.

Much has been written about the trompe-l’oeil effect of the curtain. It is a pictorial artifice used by many other Dutch masters and in keeping with an old European tradition. Rembrandt, Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, and many still-life and even landscape painters made use of such curtains as a means of simulating effects that now seem theatrical. The light background can be found in many paintings by Carel Fabritius, the Goldfinch from 1654 at the Mauritshuis in The Hague being the most famous example.[1]

The artist Tom Hunter borrowed the composition for his award-winning photograph of a squatter, Woman Reading a Possession Order.

Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, In Wikipedia. Last time retrieved May 17, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window

Web Gallery of Art: Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window

Signature: Traces of signature (?).

Provenance: Acquired in 1724 by August III, elector of Saxony, together with a number of other paintings bought in Paris. The seller threw in the picture as a present, to sweeten the deal. It was then attributed to Rembrandt, and the ascription was subsequently weakened to “manner” or “school of.” In 1783, it was engraved as a work by Govaert Flinck. The name “Van der Meer from Delft” occurred for the first time in a catalog dating from 1806, to be changed back to Flinck in 1817. From 1826 to 1860, the appellation was altered to Pieter de Hooch. It is only since 1862 that the correct identification obtains. The only Dutch provenance that could possibly apply is the sale Pieter van der Lip, Amsterdam, 1712, no. 22, “A Woman Reading in a Room, by van der Meer of Delft fl 110.” Unfortunately, the text is not specific enough to distinguish it from the one at the Rijksmuseum, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.

The above underlines the difficulties inherent to the establishment of Vermeer’s catalog. Not a single work can be traced back to the painter’s studio, nor are there any letters or contracts extant. The task of attribution rests squarely upon the shoulders of the individual critic, which explains the multiplicity of divergent opinions. In this painting, a young woman stands in the center of the composition, facing in profile an open window to the left. In the foreground is a table covered with the same Oriental rug encountered in the Woman Asleep. On it is the identical Delft plate with fruit. The window reflects the girl’s features, while to the right the large green curtain forms a deceptive frame. She is precisely silhouetted against a bare wall that reflects the light and envelops her in its luminosity.

We are here confronted with one of the salient aspects of Vermeer’s sensibility and originality. It is the stillness that stands out, the inner absorption, the remoteness from the outer world. She concentrates entirely upon the letter, holding it firmly and tautly, while she absorbs its content with utmost attention.

In the technique, the artist avows again Rembrandtesque derivation. He paints in small fatty dabs to model the forms, and obtains the desired effects by means of impasto highlights opposed to the deeper tonalities – just as the master from Leyden was wont to do. The painting is relatively large, and the smallness of the figure as opposed to its surroundings stresses immateriality and depersonalization. Vermeer considerably changed the composition in the course of execution.

Much has been written about the trompe-l’oeil effect of the curtain. It is a pictorial artifice used by many other Dutch masters and in keeping with an old European tradition. Rembrandt, Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, and many still-life and even landscape painters made use of such curtains as a means of simulating effects that now seem theatrical. The light background can be found in many paintings by Carel Fabritius, the Goldfinch from 1654 at the Mauritshuis in The Hague being the most famous example.

Web Gallery of Art, created by Emil Kren and Daniel Marx., In Web Gallery of Art. Retrieved May 17, 2009, from http://www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/v/vermeer/02a/06gread.html

The Painting in the 20th century

In 1742 the Elector of Saxony, August III, acquired this painting, which he believed to be a Rembrandt; the previous year he had bought The Procuress. During the Second World War both pictures were among Dresden’s works of art hidden for safety and consequently spared from the British bombing. In 1945 they were seized by the Red Army as booty and secretly taken to Moscow. When the question of returning Dresden’s pictures arose, the Soviet minister of culture wanted East Germany to allow two works to remain in Russia in gratitude. His choice, a masterpiece by Giorgione (c. 1476/8-1510) and Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, is evidence of the importance of this early Vermeer. This proposal was dropped and both Vermeer’s were among the paintings returned to Dresden in 1955.

Martin Bailey, (1995) In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com

Understanding “A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window”

This painting is part of a group of works painted by Vermeer in the late 1650s which mark the start of his mature period. Other works of this period include Officer and Laughing Girl (New York, The Frick Collection), The Milkmaid (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), and The Glass of Wine (Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemaldegalerie). In these paintings the artist depicts the corner of a relatively large room which is lit through a window on the left side. This compositional formula is inspired by the work of Pieter de Hooch (upper right), who nonetheless differs from Vermeer in locating his figures closer to the foreground. Vermeer’s figures at this period are smaller than those in his earlier works, while his technique is more precise.

The figure in the background of this simple and ordered interior rests his head on his hand in a melancholy attitude, while in the foreground a young woman takes a wine glass which an elegantly dressed man hands to her. The young woman’s smile and the man’s attitude indicate that we are witnessing a scene of seduction, and that the girl is largely accepting her admirer’s advances.

Also starting at this period is a greater attention to the way in which light falls on the objects and different materials, highlighting the textures (second upper right). Along with the characteristically self-absorbed character of his figures, the most famous characteristic of Vermeer’s work is its lifelikeness, the result of a complex and exquisite exercise in the transformation of reality. Some aspects of this painting allow us to approximate the way in which the artist achieved these ends. The lower frame of the window, for example, directs the spectator’s gaze towards a chair which extends the gaze further so that we arrive at the strongly, illuminated letter which the young woman is holding. The reflection of the girl in the window emphasizes the importance of the letter, which becomes the psychological axis of the painting. As in other works by Vermeer, the chair acts to clarify the spatial relations between the elements in the room, in this case the table and the end wall. The open window which reflects the girl’s face projects a slight shadow on the wall, echoing its shape and also helping to define the location of the girl’s face. The angle of the fruit bowl and the girl’s forearm are parallel and thus visually related, so that we connect the golden sleeve of the girl with the large green curtain on the right. This type of formal relation between the elements in the painting defines its visual rhythms, which the spectator becomes aware of in a slow and gradual process.

We know from x-rays that initially the end wall, just above and to the right of the young woman, had a painting of Cupid (the same one that appears in A Lady Standing at the Virginals), but that Vermeer eliminated this element in the final composition. This image would have made it clear that the content of the letter which the woman is reading is of an amorous nature. In its initial form, the vanishing point of the perspective would have been in the center of the lower part of the painting of Cupid, which would therefore have been a very important element in the painting. It is revealing of Vermeer’s working method that when he removed the painting he did not alter the scene further, other than adding the curtain on the right to balance the visual weight of the other side of the composition. The ability to express the emotions of his figures in a particular situation is one of Vermeer’s most unique characteristics. In this case, his decision to remove the painting of Cupid from the end wall results in an exceptionally evocative scene; nothing distracts us from the painting’s message, which is the idea of communication with an absent loved one.

At the time when this painting was created in the late 1650s, Vermeer was in the process of changing his pictorial technique. Although in some earlier paintings we see the appearances of small dots of light, this technique, which functions to momentarily detain our gaze on specific areas of the painting, becomes ever more widespread in his work. The technique, which was possibly inspired by the images produced by an instrument known as a camera obscura and also has precedents in the work of artists such as Willem Kalf or Willem van Aelst would soon become one of Vermeer’s most distinctive characteristics.

The idea of including a curtain in the painting which seems to form part of the space occupied by the spectator has numerous precedents and became popular in Dutch art around the mid-17th century (lower right). This device was partially inspired by reality, as we know from inventories and from paintings of picture collections that some paintings, in particular the most important ones or those that depicted nudes, were covered with cloths.

There are also precedents for this in religious painting, indicating that curtains also added an effect of mystery and surprise to a scene, and contributed to its lifelikeness in that it confused the painted with the real space. The use of a cloth for illusionistic ends has an important classical precedent which Vermeer undoubtedly knew of Pliny the Elder’s anecdote in his Natural History in which he recounts that the Greek painter Zeuxis wished to prove his artistic superiority to his rival Parrhasius’ and thus painted some grapes which were so realistic that some birds attempted to peck at them. Parrhasius’ response was to paint a curtain over the picture which he did with such skill that Zeuxis tried to pull it back.

Alejandro Vergara, (2003) In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from http://www.essentialvermeer.com

Girl Reading a Letter – Lego and comment

This is what I have just found on the Internet. 

“We are confronted with one of the salient aspects of Vermeer’s sensibility and originilaty. It is the stillness that stands out, the inner absorption, the remoteness from the outer world. She concentrates entirely upon the letter, holding it firmly and tantly, while she absorbs its content with utmost attention.”

Virtual Vermeer. Retrieved March 11, 2009, from http://www.virtualvermeer.com/index.html 

 

Besides, I have found a funny picture. It is a representation of the scene of this painting I have chosen in Lego. 

 

 

This picture has been taken from this webpage: MocPages

A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window

“Vermeer’s genius was in probing those moments in life when one feels alone and immersed in one’s thoughts. His are essentially private works, invitations to pause and partake of the quiet intimacy of the scene. Almost as in poetry, he suggests moods and attitudes in his figures that are recognizable yet not precisely defined. In this painting a girl stands in a corner of a room before an open window, her thoughts are totally absorbed in the letter she is reading. The walls, curtains, and table define the physical limits of her space; the reflection of her image in the glass emphasizes the inner nature of her thoughts. Her world is still.”

Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., Jan Vermeer, 1981

• Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr., (1981) In Essential Vermeer. Retrieved March 9, 2009, from Essential Vermeer