Who owns the thirty-fifth canvas by Jan Vermeer of Delft? And are there more than thirty-five works by this master of cool, clear daylight? I have seen nearly all the pictures attributed to the too little known Dutchman, and as far as was in my power I have read all the critical writings by such experts as Havard, Obreen, Bredius, Hofstede de Groot (Jan Vermeer van Delft en Carel Fabritius, 1907), Doctor Bode, Wauters, Arsène Alexandre, G. Geoffroy, Bürger, Taine, John Smith, Gustave Vanzype, and several others.

Doctor A. Bredius has printed an article entitled: A Pseudo-Vermeer in the Berlin gallery, which I have not been able to procure, but then the same worthy authority has contested the authenticity of the portrait of a young man in the Brussels Museum. It is not signed, this beautiful head, and at one time it was in the English collections of Humphry Ward and Peter Norton, and later in the Collection Otlet at Brussels. Smith catalogued it as a Rembrandt; indeed, it had the false signature of [Pg 142] the great master. Much later it was accredited to Jan Victoors, a Rembrandt pupil, and to Nicolas Maes, and under this name was sold in Paris in 1900. A. J. Wauters finally declared it a Vermeer, though neither Bredius nor Hofstede de Groot are of his opinion. And now we hear the question: Who owns the thirty-fifth Vermeer, Vermeer of the magical blue and yellow?

First let us ask: Who was Jan Vermeer, or Van der Meer? "What songs did the sirens sing?" puzzled good old Sir Thomas Browne, and we know far more about William Shakespeare or Sappho or Memling than we do of the enigmatic man from Delft who died a double death in 1675; not only the death of the body, but the death of the spirit, of his immortal art. For several centuries he was not accorded the paternity of his own pictures. To Terburg, Pieter de Hooch, Nicolas Maes, Metsu they were credited. Even the glorious Letter Reader of the Dresden gallery has been attributed to De Hooch, and by no less an authority than Charles Blanc. Fromentin, of all men, does not mention his name in his always admirable book on the art of the Low Countries; no doubt one cause for his neglect.

This is precisely what we know of Jan Vermeer of Delft, in which city—oddly enough—there is not a single canvas of his. In 1632 he was born there. In 1653 he married Catherine Bolnes; he was just twenty-one years old. His [Pg 143] admission to the corporation of painters as a master occurred the same year, as the books attest. In 1662 he was elected dean of the corporation, and again in 1670. In 1675 he died, in his forty-third year, and at the apogee of his powers.

When he became a member of the corporation of painters at Delft he could not pay in full the initiation fee, six florins, and he gave on account one florin ten cents—the entry in the books attests this astounding fact. He was poor, but he had youth and genius, and he loved.

He had also eight or ten children and lived happily—as do most people without a history—on the Oude Langendyck, where he became at least a local celebrity, according to a mention of him in the Journal des Voyages, by Balthazar de Moncouys (published 1665). Moncouys also recorded another interesting fact. "At Delft I saw the painter Vermeer," he writes, "but none of his works were at his atelier; at a baker\'s I saw a figure—for which was paid six hundred livres." At a bakeshop! Vermeer, then, literally painted for his bread.

In 1696, twenty years after his death, certain of his works (forty in the catalogue) brought only 100 florins, pictures that to-day are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in 1719 the superb Milk Girl, now in the Rijks Museum, formerly from the Six Collection, was sold for 126 florins (it brought $100,000 when Mr. Six sold it to the museum), while at the same sale [Pg 144] the mediocre Gerard Dou fetched 6,000 florins for a canvas. Even nowadays the public has not been converted to the idea of the greatness of Vermeer. Go any time of the day into the Mauritshuis at The Hague and you will always discover a crowd before that clumsy, stupid bull with the wooden legs, by no means Paul Potter\'s masterpiece, while the gem of The Hague gallery, the View of Delft, with its rich pate, its flowing rhythms, its clear daylight, seldom draws a large audience. And I do not doubt that only the propinquity of Rembrandt\'s Young Saskia to Vermeer\'s Merry Company (otherwise known as The Courtesan) in the Dresden gallery attracts an otherwise indifferent public.

In 1696 there were 21 pictures of Vermeer sold at public auction in Amsterdam. Of these 21 the experts claim to have discovered 16. But the bother of the question is that 100 other pictures were also sold at the same time; furthermore, the sale is said to have taken place after the death of a venerable mediocrity, also named Vermeer, but hailing from Haarlem. (He died in 1691.) This confusion of names may have had something to do with the obscuring of the great Vermeer. But he had no vogue in 1696, as the prices at the sale prove only too well.

Vanzype gives the list, and its importance in any research of the Vermeer pictures is paramount. Here are the 21 canvases that are extant, [Pg 145] and the prices paid: No. 1—A young woman weighing gold, 155 florins; 2—A milk girl, 175 florins; 3—The portrait of the painter in his studio, 45 florins; 4—A young woman playing the guitar, 70 florins; 5—A gentleman in his chamber, 95 florins; 6—A young lady playing the clavecin, w............