discursive discourse: “vermeer’s love letters” at the frick

“Vermeer’s Love Letters” continues at the Frick through August 31 (photo by Joseph Coscia Jr.)

“For an artist who died in penury at age forty-three and was basically forgotten in art history for two hundred years, today [Johannes] Vermeer is an artist that we cannot get enough of,” Frick curator Aimee Ng said at the press opening of “Vermeer’s Love Letters,” the inaugural display in the new Ronald S. Lauder Exhibition Galleries. “In very classic Frick style, this is an exhibition that encourages, fosters, invites close looking, deep thinking, and simply marveling at staggering works of art.”

In 2023, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam hosted the simply titled “Vermeer,” consisting of twenty-eight of the known thirty-seven works by the Dutch master, the most ever gathered for one presentation. Ten Vermeer canvases are currently hanging in New York City: At the Met (Gallery 614) are Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, Allegory of the Catholic Faith, A Maid Asleep, Young Woman with a Lute, and Study of a Young Woman, while the Frick has Officer and Laughing Girl and Girl Interrupted at Her Music back in their usual spots in the hallway by the grand staircase and three other Vermeer paintings that comprise “Vermeer’s Love Letters.”

It might be only three works, but it is an exquisite exhibit, worth spending a lot of time investigating, revisiting, and “simply marveling at.”

Curated by Dr. Robert Fucci, “Vermeer’s Love Letters” brings together, for the first time, three of the artist’s six paintings involving a maid, a mistress, and a letter: the Frick’s Mistress and Maid, the Rijksmuseum’s The Love Letter, and the National Gallery of Ireland’s Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, arranged side by side by side, with plenty of opportunity for contemplation. Do not hurry through this stunning display, as you would be doing yourself, and the paintings, a grave disservice.

Johannes Vermeer, Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, oil on canvas, ca. 1670–72 (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin / image © National Gallery of Ireland)

At the far left is Woman Writing a Letter with Her Maid, in which the maid, gazing out the window of a small room, arms folded in front of her, stands near her mistress, who is sitting at a fabric-draped table, determinedly writing on a piece of paper. An elegant, angled green curtain at the left of the window unfurls in sharp contrast to the plainer, more delicate white curtain at the right, mimicking the colors worn by the two women. In the background is what might be Vermeer’s inextant Finding of Moses, which also appears in his 1668 work The Astronomer. The white at the center of Moses is right above the glowing light from the window that illuminates the mistress. The maid’s blue apron matches the blue of a chair partially visible at the right, turned in a way that perhaps represents not only the missing lover the mistress might be writing to but an invitation to the viewer into this milieu; patches of blue can also be seen in a design on the window. On the black-and-white checkerboard floor is a red seal, a stick of sealing wax, and crumpled paper, providing an air of mystery.

Johannes Vermeer, Mistress and Maid, oil on canvas, ca. 1664–67 (the Frick Collection, New York / photo by Joseph Coscia Jr.)

In the middle is Mistress and Maid — the last work acquired by Henry Clay Frick himself — in which a maid, similarly but not exactly attired as her counterpart in Woman Writing a Letter, is handing a note to her mistress, who is wearing a fancy yellow mantle trimmed in black-dotted white fur. Her left hand reaches up to her chin, calling attention to her pearl earring and necklace and bejeweled hair clip; her right hand has just put down a pen on a sheet of paper she had been writing on. The maid has interrupted her; it appears that the mistress was not expecting this message. The table is covered with blue cloth lighter in shade than the maid’s blue apron; between them, on the table, is a silver-and-glass writing set and a veneered box, symbolizing the importance the mistress accords this process. The background was initially a green curtain but has since browned, creating a a dark atmosphere in which the very center of the canvas is empty space, lending more scrutiny to the exchange, which occurs in close-up.

Johannes Vermeer, The Love Letter, oil on canvas, ca. 1669–70 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)

Finally, at the far right, is The Love Letter, the smallest of the three works at 17 5∕16 × 15 3∕16 in. The maid and the mistress are set deep into the picture, which is triple-framed; they are further ensconced within a narrow doorway. The maid, in green, white, and blue, smiling slightly, is looking down at her mistress, who is seated facing the viewer but is looking up at her maid with consternation. Although it is not the same mistress as the one in Woman Writing a Letter, she is wearing the same clothing and earrings and necklace, and the floor pattern is the same. In her right hand is a sealed letter — we don’t know who is giving it to whom — while in her left hand she is holding the fretboard of a cittern, a lutelike stringed instrument that she appears to have been playing a moment earlier. The canvas is filled with items to investigate: crumpled sheet music on a chair outside the room, opposite a map of Holland on the wall; a drawn, heavily designed curtain, as if opened so we can gaze into the chamber; a pair of shoes and a broom block our access to the room itself, making us feel like we should not be seeing what is happening inside; a linen basket and blue sewing cushion are on the same black-and-white checkerboard floor as in Woman Writing a Letter; two calming paintings of nature scenes hang on the back wall, harkening to the outside world that is otherwise only evoked by the light on the two characters coming from an unseen window. To the mistress’s left is a partially visible mantel. There is no indication of any writing, no pen, no paper, no desk, no sealing wax, but the interruption of the music echoes the interruption in the Frick work.

Two of the canvases take on greater, personal meaning as well. When Vermeer died in 1675 at the age of forty-three, leaving behind eleven children, his widow, Catharina Bolnes, paid off a large debt to a baker by giving him The Love Letter and Woman Writing a Letter, with the stipulation that she could buy them back when she got out of bankruptcy. That appears not to have happened.

The three canvases form a fascinating trio when viewed from a distance as a group, their similarities and differences becoming even more apparent; notice especially the placement of the figures’ arms and faces, giving the three paintings a kind of cinematic flourish. Exploring them this way also took me in another direction, thinking about the act of writing itself. One imagines that the mistresses have exquisite handwriting, like Lady Whistledown’s in Bridgerton. But it also made me pine for the dying art of cursive.

In his October 2020 Psychology Today essay “Why Cursive Handwriting Is Good for Your Brain,” Christopher Bergland writes, “As school-age children increasingly rely solely on digital devices for remote- and in-class learning, many K-12 school systems around the world are phasing out cursive handwriting and no longer mandate that kids learn how to write in longhand script. Relying solely on a keyboard to learn the alphabet and type out written words could be problematic; accumulating evidence suggests that not learning cursive handwriting may hinder the brain’s optimum potential to learn and remember.”

Bergland cites a study in which professor Audrey van der Meer of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology explains, “The use of pen and paper gives the brain more ‘hooks’ to hang your memories on. Writing by hand creates much more activity in the sensorimotor parts of the brain. A lot of senses are activated by pressing the pen on paper, seeing the letters you write and hearing the sound you make while writing. These sense experiences create contact between different parts of the brain and open the brain up for learning. We both learn better and remember better.”

In addition, artificial intelligence is playing a major role in how writing is changing. In his July 7-14 New Yorker critique “The End of the Essay,” professor and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Hua Hsu, in an article about the growing use of AI among high school and college students and teachers, posits, “Has there ever been a time in human history when writing was so important to the average person? E-mails, texts, social-media posts, angry missives in comments sections, customer-service chats — let alone one’s actual work. The way we write shapes our thinking. We process the world through the composition of text dozens of times a day. . . . It’s possible that the ability to write original and interesting sentences will become only more important in a future where everyone has access to the same AI assistants.”

I shudder to think of these three mistresses typing on smartphones, with AI assistants instead of loyal maids serving as secret go-betweens. Hsu continues, “Writing is hard, regardless of whether it’s a five-paragraph essay or a haiku.” The act of putting pen to paper is critical in Vermeer’s works; you can practically hear what is going on in each of the canvases.

“Vermeer’s Love Letters” focuses on a compelling aspects of the artist’s oeuvre (photo by Joseph Coscia Jr.)

Of course, as I write this, I am typing on a keyboard, but I do have notebooks in front of me containing my difficult-to-read scribblings, including notes I took at the press preview for the Vermeer show. And I avoid using AI in any manner.

Hsu does point out that some professors have returned to handwritten tests in blue books in order to keep AI out of the equation, but that’s going to be a losing battle.

Will future generations look at Vermeer’s love-letter paintings and wonder why the women didn’t just sext with their object of affection? What will be the result when tomorrow’s artists put in prompts such as “woman writing love letter”? Perhaps a school trip to the Frick is in order, but they better hurry, as the exhibition is up only through August 31.

In “Modern Love,” the third chapter of the exhibition catalog, Dr. Fucci quotes from Jacob Cats’s Houwelyck (Marriage), a 1625 illustrated tome that follows the stages of a woman’s life, as the vryster Rosette asks the newly married Sibille: “Imagine if I find a young man appealing, / Shall I not sweetly, in a letter, / Bemoan to him about my desire? / Paper does not modestly blush, / And pen and ink express in ways / That mouth and tongue do not dare.” Fucci then adds, “Definitely not, warns Sibille. Anything that you commit to paper might ruin your good name since letters can have a life of their own once they leave your hands, and ‘There is no denial possible / when one sees your round letters standing there.’”

I can’t argue with that.

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