One of fall fashion’s hottest “it” bags is a collaboration between a luxury label and an artist infamously known for his salesmanship and love of kitsch. The pricey satchels feature reproductions of well-known masterworks, such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Édouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe, and J. M. W. Turner’s Ancient Rome, and include the (original) artist’s name emblazoned in gold block letters on the side. It’s a new low for high culture.
Is this latest fad any different from the museum-shop umbrella covered in Monet’s waterlilies or the silk scarf printed with Hokusai’s Mount Fuji? “Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting” is similarly the kind of blockbuster show that gives a museum a tasteful treasure trove of gift-shop merchandise. Fortunately, it also provides a rare opportunity to view sixty-five masterpieces by the best of the Dutch high-life genre painters including, among others, Gerard ter Borch, Gerrit Dou, Gabriel Metsu, Jan Steen, Frans van Mieris, alongside ten works by Johannes Vermeer.
Maes’s lacemaker has none of the ethereal light or quiet magnetism of Vermeer’s.
The relative ease of travel in the Netherlands enabled these artists to view each other’s work in guild halls, auction houses, dealers’ spaces, and collectors’ homes. Subtitled “inspiration and rivalry,” the exhibition draws connections between the artists, their motifs, and their shared techniques whether they were teacher and pupil (Dou and van Mieris) or drinking buddies (van Mieris and Steen). The networks of influence are deftly worked