Private Air New York

www.privateairny.com Private Air | Winter 2021/2022 66 ese two pictures appear to be almost mirror images of the same pictorial ideas: a flat white wall illuminated from the upper left filled with rectangles within rectangles. e foreground is set with a child in the De Hooch with its counterpoint of a chair against the wall, while Vermeer uses the empty chair- perhaps a metaphor of our own presence witnessing the scene- in the foreground. e open doorkjikje in the PDH perhaps finds its parallel in the open virginal. Even after De Hooch moved to Amsterdam, it is clear by these pictures from the late 1660's, early 1670's that each artist was aware of the work of the other. Woman at the Virginals Woman Holding a Balance ese are the most famous pair of rhyming PDH/JV works. Both canvases show a single figure, likely both artist's wives, with similar dress at a table by a window with a rug draped over the left side. But then the pictures diverge: Vermeer uses a painting on the wall as his rectangle in rectangle device, while PDH adds his doorkijkje. Vermeer adds a mirror in the foreground with dramatic light filtering in behind and down through the scene to the lower right while PDH opens the shutter and has a has a diffuse light, barely traceable, permeating the scene. A chair appears only in the De Hooch composition where x-rays revealed once sat a male figure which was then removed, leading many historians to assume that this canvas was the model for the other since PDH arrived at this composition thru his own process of elimination. Why else would he have put that figure there in the first place? Well, PDH rarely painted solitary figures. In Peter Sutton's catalogue raisonnè spanning 35 years of some 150 paintings, there are only 3. In fairness to Vermeer, the argument could also be made that PDH liked what Vermeer did and tried his own version with two figures and then opted to leave the figure alone. We can often catalogue Vermeer's pictures often by the way the flat white walls are chopped up and peek through his compositions. Uncharacteristically, here De Hooch shows the larger expanse of empty wall space between the two in his Woman Weighing Gold. De Hooch also rarely fades heads into pictures or maps, preferring to use his doorways as portals for his figures. But here we have each artist addressing the play of figure and rectangle differently: PDH puts his figure emerging out of the rectangle (door) as Vermeer usually does while Vermeer puts his figure inside the rectangle (religious painting) like PDH does in his doorkijkjes. Metaphorically, one figure being absorbed in another higher sphere, while the other leaving that world to join the living and the world of gold. Gemaldegalerie Berlin National Gallery, London National Gallery, Washington DC Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza ART

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