excerpts from: Maria Vermeer’s Secret Career by Sophia Perring: July 18, 2020 by Yiara Magazine
Though Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is now one of the most popular artists of the Dutch Republic, his work was not well-known beyond Delft within his lifetime. Benjamin Binstock claimed in his book, Vermeer’s Family Secrets: Genius, Discovery and the Unknown Apprentice, that around 6 of the artist’s 34 works were actually produced by Vermeer’s eldest daughter, Maria. Maria Vermeer remains unknown to us, due to the position of women and female artists in 17th century Netherlands: Though men and markets thrived in 17th century Netherlands, this period was not the “Golden Age” for women. Dutch women were limited to the domestic sphere: young girl, marriageable girl, bride, wife, mother, and widow. Dutch women were entirely dependent upon their husbands, economically, socially and politically. This harmful view of gender stated that women chose to subordinate themselves because they understood that their inferiority was God’s indisputable decision.
Maria Vermeer was an inherently talented young woman, whose father’s profession gave her the opportunity to try her hand at painting resulting in a number of similar paintings (all now attributed to Vermeer) which display two different levels of skill.
For instance, Young Woman with a Guitar
emulates Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Guitar (c. 1674).
Portrait of a Young Woman (c. 1672)
is also very similar to Girl with the Pearl Earring, c. 1670. Johannes Vermeer,
although the former work displays a lesser level of skill.
Maria developed her own style too, as seen through the Girl with the Red Hat ( c. 1672).
When Vermeer died and the family’s financial stability continued to deteriorate, Maria and her mother sold “fake-Vermeers” (i.e. Maria’s work) to their creditors. Maria’s abilities as a painter would, therefore, have had to remain a secret. This is why there are no documents that prove her artistic involvement.
Why couldn’t she have sold her work under her own name? What societal structures enabled her to remain unseen?
For male artists, a 10 or 12-year-old trainee would go through a course of training with a professional artist, working under a formal contract with the master. Under this contract, the student-turned-laborer’s work became the master’s property. It was a recognized custom for masters to sign their pupil’s work with their own name. Most female artists were “apprentices” to their fathers because they were disallowed from most forms of institutional training. They would not be listed in guild records. This would have been the case for Maria Vermeer. Maria would have become an apprentice to her father, when she was about eighteen. Despite her lack of guild training, she would have undergone the formal training of an apprentice. To begin an apprenticeship at 18 years old is late for a typical apprentice, but she grew up watching her father paint, and she began, like other apprentices, to copy her father’s work, making small personalized adjustments. As Vermeer struggled to make ends meet for his family, he recognized the possibility of surreptitiously selling Maria’s work as his own to his creditors. The training undergone by Maria would have enabled Vermeer, as her master, to take credit for her works.
Maria’s composition is eccentrically and brilliantly done, especially considering her lack of formal or extensive training, but it is not free of blunders. Portrait of a Young Woman is technically weak, especially when compared to Vermeer’s antecedent Girl with a Pearl Earring. The technical errors present in these works are, however, disregarded when Vermeer’s name comes into play. Maria would have ultimately been more successful under her father’s name than under her own, as her father’s eminence absorbed the blow of her artistic mistakes. Maria, like many female artists, abandoned her art after marriage, and she created no new works away from her father’s sphere. This sealed the secrecy in which her work would be kept for three centuries.
