Private Air New York

www.privateairny.com Private Air | Winter 2021/2022 60 same room as the latter and several other canvases of PDH, likely upon his move to the Oude Delft from the Binnenwatersloot. De Hooch has the scene dynamic and handmade with arms flying and an attendant servant and uses stunning color arrangement with yellows, blacks and greens, purples with rich crimson accents. e Vermeer on the other hand, carves the scene in gemstone. e figures are immobile, but shining. ere is an overall saturation of beautiful colors, creating a Dutch light that sparkles on the figures and echoes in the blues and warms of the map behind them. De Hooch merges the foreground male figure's hat with the dark closed window, moving that figure into the scene with the others while Vermeer exaggerated the contrasting presence of the dark male figure and hat against the bright window, creating an imposing presence out of proportion with the smaller female figure in the distance. e map on the wall that comes down and echoes the potent space between the man and maiden suggests he is worldly and possibly a traveler to the distant lands that the Dutch explored and traded at that time. And as Jonathan Janson states in his comprehensive website, Essential Vermeer, the beaver hat may refer to the exploration in the New World where beaver were eagerly sought out after having had been eradicated in most of the Europe. Map making exploded in the 17th Holland and was its own form of representation of the world and was analogous to painting in a way. Vermeer frequently used maps to imply distance and a separate dimension from the main scene in the canvas as PDH did with his doorways. Sometimes De Hooch comparisons don't help. Vermeer's Soldier with the Laughing Girl has been dated around 1657- no doubt to match up with the De Hooch although this canvas is too developed for Vermeer's early period and is closer to other scenes in the 1660s using the same figure(his wife) and attire such as the Music Lesson and Young Woman with a Water Pitcher. A more contemporaneous juxtaposition of works are these early pictures on tiled floors. Here we see one of Vermeer's first depictions of a chair, used as a prop and catching the angled light thru the window. PDH uses a chair to repeat the flat geometry of the window frame. Gemaldegalerie Berlin Frick Museum Gemaldegalerie Berlin National Gallery, London Louvre ART

• Cover