Jacobus Vrel. Enigmatic Forerunner of Vermeer

At first glance, nothing seems to link Jacobus Vrel to the famous Johannes Vermeer except their initials ‘JV’. Nevertheless, many of their paintings share the same contemplative calm, the central role played by the female figures and, very often, a certain air of mystery. For these reasons, many works by Jacobus Vrel were for a long time attributed to Vermeer. Unfamiliar to the wider public, they have been intriguing and fascinating art historians for more than a century. Who then was this enigmatic seventeenth-century painter?

It was in an attempt to solve the mystery of Jacobus Vrel that an international research project was set up in 2018. Close examination of the archives unfortunately produced no information on the painter’s birthplace, or where he died, nor on his activity.

On the other hand, dendrochronological analysis undertaken for the project (i.e. the dating of the wooden panels on which the paintings are executed) established that Vrel painted his first cityscapes in about 1635 and his interiors in about 1650. This means that he was not a follower of Vermeer, as had long been surmised, but a forerunner.

In order further to highlight the originality of the works of Jacobus Vrel, the Fondation Custodia is devoting three galleries in the exhibition to Dutch contemporaries of the painter who dealt with similar subjects: town views and genre scenes.

Vrel’s street views appear to offer us a glimpse of urban life in seventeenth-century Holland, but they arrest our attention because of their unclassifiable architecture. Vrel is the first painter of the Golden Age to have chosen as his subject views of streets and buildings with no historical or important event in progress. This type of painting was to experience far-reaching developments in the second half of the seventeenth century in the hands of artists such as Jan van der Heyden (1637–1712) or Jan Abrahamsz. Beerstraaten (1622–1666).

With regard to Vrel’s interiors, they are also difficult to fit into the context of Dutch art. These empty rooms – empty apart from the scrap of paper on the floor bearing his signature, bounded by equally empty walls and a window, behind which the pale face of a child looms from the darkness, have no equivalent in the art of his century.

On the other hand, in his interiors, Vrel has recourse to a repertoire of subjects already well established in Dutch art. His figures of women cooking, sewing, ministering to the sick or minding children have many parallels. From the Alte Pinakothek in Munich, the exhibition presents the magnificent painting by Pieter Janssens, known as Elinga (1623–1682) whose interiors populated with female figures invite the same reverie as those of Vrel.

The graphic arts do not lag behind in the eulogy of daily life offered to posterity by seventeenth-century Dutch artists. On view for example is the drawing from the Rijksmuseum in which a woman seen from behind leans out of a Dutch door, a subject very dear to Vrel. This drawing was attributed to Rembrandt for many years but is nowadays ascribed to Nicolaes Maes (1634–1693), one of the master’s brilliant students.

The exhibition thus takes visitors on a journey through the artistic production of the Dutch Golden Age, at the heart of which Jacobus Vrel both fits in and stands out.

The exhibition’s first venue in the Mauritshuis in The Hague took place from 16 February to 29 May 2023.