James Discovers Jan Vermeer of Delft

James Discovers Jan Vermeer of Delft by Adeline R. Tintner, New York City Although Proust has been given credit for being the first novelist to introduce Vermeer as a modern taste in A La Recherche du Temps Perdu (in which Swann writes an essay on the Dutch master and Bergotte, dying, must see the "little patch of yellow" in The View of Delft), it is actuaUy Henry James who anticipated the French novelist. In The Outcry, both in its play version (written in 1909 but never produced) and in its novel version (1911), the young connoisseur Hugh Crimble recognizes in a supposed Cuyp a little landscape by Vermeer, or Vandermeer of Delft, as he was then also known. In a novel devoted to the correction of false attributions of paintings, the recognition of the Vermeer establishes for the reader the sensitivity of the young connoisseur and his unerring eye. The big issue of whether or not a painting by Moretto is much more valuable than one by Mantovano, a painter who, unlike Vermeer, is an invented artist, but whose pictures, like those of Vermeer, consist only of a few choice and rare examples, wiU be decided not merely by his judgment but by that of one of the world's great authorities. But it is Hugh's own genius that immediately recognizes the Dutch master. The recognition scene is built up so that the bulk of two whole sections of the first three books of the novel are devoted to settling the Vermeer question. Mr. Breckenridge Bender, the American multimillionaire, clearly modelled on J. P. Morgan, "approached a significantly small canvas."1 He asks Lady Sandgate, who herself owns some great pictures, "Do you know what this here is?" Since she is not yet the mistress of Dedborough, Lord Theign's castle where the scene takes place, she answers, '"Oh, you can't have than . . . You musn't expect to ravage Dedborough.' He had his nose meanwhile close to the picture. Ί guess it's a bogus Cuyp'" (OC 26). In the next section Lady Sandgate reports this event to Lord Theign's daughter, Lady Grace. "He thinks your little Cuyp a fraud." Lady Grace replies, '"That one? The wretch!' However, she made, without alarm, no more of it" (OC 31). When Hugh Crimble, the young expert, comes to the house to look at the pictures, "she indicated the small landscape that Mr. Bender had, by Lady Sandgate's report, rapidly studied and denounced. 'For what do you take that little picture?'"2 Hugh Crimble went over and looked. "Why, don't you know? It's a jolly little Vandermeer of Delft." "It's not a base imitation?" He looked again but appeared at a loss. "An imitation of Vandermeer?" "Mr. Bender thinks of Cuyp." It made the young man ring out: "Then Mr. Bender's doubly dangerous !" (OC 48) It is this attribution that establishes for the reader Hugh's expertise. He sees that Vermeer is an inimitable artist. "An imitation of Vermeer?" This is an impossibility. This makes him say that Bender is a double threat. Not only is he taking away to America England's treasures but he is an ignoramus to boot. Volume VIII 57 Number 1 The Henry James Review FaU, 1986 Vermeer is the benchmark of Hugh's talent, and it is possible that the pavement of the floor of the castle that Hugh looks at when he tries to make Lord Theign give "assurance" that the pictures will not leave England reflects Vermeer's signpost, the black and white tiles that distinguish the floors of ten of Vermeer's most mature paintings (a third of all his works) and that decorate at least three of the paintings that James had some familiarity with.3 Hugh becomes aware of these floors as he chaUenges Lord Theign. "Hugh stood there with his eyes on the black and white pavement that stretched about him—the great lozenged marble floor that might have figured that ground of his own vision which he had made up his mind to 'stand'" (OC 108). In other words, the distinction between the black and white of the floor tiles corresponds to the...