Going Dutch
We had the good fortune of finding ourselves in Amsterdam in April 2023, which allowed us to take in the fabulous exhibition in the Rijksmuseum that presented nearly all of the extant paintings of Johannes Vermeer. Although the COVID-19 pandemic was still underway, we masked up and joined the crowds of people who patiently waited their turn to stand before each of the marvelous works on display, including The Astronomer, featured above. What a treat!
The exhibition also brought to mind an extraordinary documentary we had seen some years earlier, Tim’s Vermeer. The film chronicles the extensive – some might say obsessive – efforts of an inventor named Tim Jenison to duplicate Vermeer’s painting techniques so as to determine whether he employed a camera obscura to aid in creating his art.
Anthony Lane, whom you may know from his many movie reviews, recently published an insightful article about Vermeer in The New Yorker, from which we drew the quotation found in this week’s acrostic. If you wish to read the full article, you can find it in the April 26, 2026, print edition or online under a different title (“The Violence in Vermeer”).
The acrostic includes a variety of other Dutch treats, including references to The Love Letter, another painting by Vermeer, and to The Night Watch, a painting by Rembrandt. And what acrostic about Vermeer would be complete without nods to Girl with a Pearl Earring (the painting, the novel, and the film)? In connection with Clue/Answer E., here’s a scene from the latter:
An interesting puzzle about a very interesting artist. I have enjoyed seeing Vermeer’s art both in the Netherlands and in the United States, on a rare occasion when we had a major Vermeer exhibit here.
During last night’s sunset, the word “vermilion” came up in recalling the final line in Hopkins’ poem. Life imitates art after all.
The Acrostic itself is a work of art.
Thanks be to you for such things.
Dutch art, and particularly Vermeer have been my favorites since loving art as a kid and then through my college art studies. I have seen some of his originals here in our wonderful San Francisco museums and also in London and Amsterdam. On a tour of the Low Countries which included a stay in Delft, I found it curious that Vermeer’s home city did not have any of his originals. The closest was a short train ride away to The Hague. However, there was a Vermeer Center in Delft which showcased his bio and all of his works, and had a room set up as a studio demonstrating the pigments and tools he used, including how the camera obscura worked. Thoroughly enjoyable, as was this puzzle. Thanks for the memories.
My parents went to the Vermeer exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C (which ran for three months starting in mid-November 1995). It was an unusually cold winter, and a government shutdown along with a blizzard caused the exhibit to be closed for several weeks. Standing outside in a line in the bitter cold was quite an ordeal, but they felt fortunate to get in. That exhibit had 21 of Vermeer’s paintings on display.
There’s a documentary about the 2023 Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum titled “Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition.” I haven’t watched it yet but I plan to, as it’s available on a couple of streaming platforms.
Re clue K (“One on the night watch?”) – before I caught on to the puzzle’s subject, I thought the answer might be “Phosphorus”. Made perfect sense to me!
Vermeer – one of the masters of the Dutch Golden Age. I saw The Girl with the Pearl Earring in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague. Similar in the size of The Mona Lisa, The Girl with the Pearl Earring has served as an inspiration for songs, movies, and books.
That Vermeer exhibition sounds absolutely incredible – I’d love to have caught that before the crowds got too thick. Tim’s Vermeer is such a wild rabbit hole; it’s fascinating how obsessed he gets with the camera obscura question.