An early morning start and the signs of rain made the embrace of the National Gallery of Ireland’s Nassau Street entrance more comforting than usual. I purposely avoided the rest of the reopened gallery so that I wouldn’t be completely overwhelmed after two years of dreaming about what lay in store for me.
I was still excited at the thought that I was about to witness, in person, paintings which I had spent the last year analysing and discussing from (mainly) black and white photographs in catalogues, while the curator and newly appointed Head of Collections and Research at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dr Adriaan Waiboer confessed that he had also been doing the exact same thing for the last 7 years in preparation for this exhibit.
I understand that Dutch 17th century genre painting, particularly interior scenes, can often appear to have repetitive subject matter. Did people really do nothing else except court each other and play cards while drinking? The vast majority did. However, the social group highlighted in this exhibition is the emerging bourgeoisie… not so much. If anything that just makes them more interesting to look at, their frivolity and decadence only serves to make the discussion of a stratified society impossible to avoid, a discussion which remains pertinent to this day.
The focus of the exhibition, with the long title ‘Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry’, is about the interactions between various Dutch artists working at the time. Dr Waiboer, however, summarised the exhibition more eloquently:
“This is about similarities but it is also about differences, these artists like some ideas from each other’s paintings but they want to make clear to others that they are different. Some do that with humour, some are more serious, some make women more erotic, others more introverted. Some give you the entire story, others only parts.”
This symbiotic relationship of sorts is evident in the layout of the display, which is simultaneously decorative and pared back. The curation team have done away with the traditional label and block of biographical text to the side of paintings – which we have grown so accustomed to in galleries – and replaced it with the name of the artists and titles of the paintings displayed high above the individual works. All other information is available in a palm-sized booklet you are presented with upon arrival. I found the distance placed between the works and their makers to be a welcome change, as Dr Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., a curator from the Washington National Gallery of Art said, “It allows you to create those relationships yourself”. Wheelock remarked that at the showing of this exhibition in the Fondation Custodia in Paris the booklets were well received as it’s a tradition in French galleries, but whether or not Irish visitors will take to it is yet to be seen.
With the help of loans from various galleries across the world including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, the exhibition boasts ten paintings by Johannes Vermeer – an astonishing experience considering his known output is limited to little more than 40 paintings.
A map of the Dutch Republic stares at you with it’s stark white outline standing out from the dark blue walls with the major artistic centres pointed out for those who are curious. As you progress from this starting point through the vast collection of 63 paintings, a total which felt overwhelming at times, the different types of women depicted in these paintings becomes clear. Young women writing letters and drinking with their suitors, mothers minding their children, and maids carefully tending to their master’s every need. One archetypal image, however, is missing despite its importance as the link which connects every woman displayed: the pregnant woman.
I questioned Dr Waiboer on this omission as it was something that had bothered me since I opened my first Dutch art history book in September and did not see a single mention. He acknowledged that although it was odd that a state which so regularly impacted women wasn’t represented; it wasn’t unexpected. With this collection, what we were looking at wasn’t an exhibition of daily life for the residents of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century. We were looking at an idealised reality which the artists had organically developed through experimentation with different tropes:
It’s an amalgamation of Dutch 17th century paintings which shows the changing styles and moods of the time and how certain artists seized these changes and others rejected them almost entirely.
“I always compare these scenes to modern day soaps. I gave a lecture on this topic a while ago and I asked the audience, ‘Do you ever wonder why people in soaps wake up with makeup on? Why do people in soaps never sneeze? Why don’t they go to the toilet?’ Because that is not what we want to see. We might want to see that in a reality show, for example Big Brother, we want to see someone going to the toilet because it has a function there; the intrusion of privacy.”
Waiboer’s explanation was one of the most profound things that anyone has ever said to me, due in part to it’s accessibility and sheer lack of pretension. (Read: It is perfectly acceptable to use soap operas as metaphor, if not something to be encouraged!!!)
Initially, I had felt somewhat out of place at the press preview. Bryan Dobson of RTE fame waltzed passed me, and cameramen hovered in corners. But it wasn’t all seriousness and cultural discourse; there were paintings where all I could say in response was ‘I just don’t think it’s pretty’ while the openness of this exhibition, including it’s layout, allowed for that to be said with a lack of the usual fear.
There is great humour to be found in this exhibit if that’s what you wish to seek, with Waiboer describing the male figure in The Oyster Meal by Frans van Mieris (1661) simply as “a dirty old man”, and laughing in astonishment at the absence of something as common as a pregnant woman when Vermeer’s wife was pregnant for much of their marriage.
Despite Vermeer’s presence on all of the memorabilia and in their press release, those involved in the curation of this exhibition including Dr Wheelock, seemed keen to dispel the notion that this was an exhibition of Vermeer. It’s an amalgamation of Dutch 17th century paintings which shows the changing styles and moods of the time and how certain artists seized those changes and others rejected them almost entirely.
My morning – which soon became an afternoon – visit to the National Gallery of Ireland is one that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in costume or social history, or perhaps those who just like to look at pretty things. It gives an invaluable insight to the intimate lives of the Dutch 17th century middle classes whose problems and past-times are quite similar to those we have today.
The exhibit is open to the public from Saturday the 17th of June, running until the 17th of September when it moves to the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Student tickets are an amicable €5 with the full price being €15. Friends of the Gallery, as always, have free entry to the exhibition.
Also check out Nialler9’s playlist for the exhibitions opening.
