Johannes Vermeer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The demand for tickets to the Vermeer exhibition was so great that it took everyone by surprise: sold out, over 200,000 tickets sold and extraordinary openings for the Rijksmuseum in order to please as many people as possible. What explains this incredible popularity of Johannes Vermeer’s works?
The Rijksmuseum didn’t have much hope: “We thought: such a Vermeer exhibition will never be successful,” they said when it was clear it would be. The Rijks, according to AD, had always thought of a similar exhibition but putting all the works together risked being a desperate operation: other museums hardly allow loans: the Vermeers are important attractors of crowds and also rather fragile”. Four crucial works, thanks to a series of coincidences, arrived from the Frick Collection in New York (after years of talks) and after other important loans and the goal in sight, one major problem remained: will people come? Having ascertained that people responded en masse, it remains to be seen why precisely for Vermeer.
“His work dates back to the 17th century, but somehow it seems timeless,” says Abbie Vandivere, restorer at the Mauritshuis, when asked what might explain the rush for tickets. According to her, this is due to the fact that the actions people in the paintings perform are “small”. “They seem to be taking a long time, and that’s where you come in. Take the Melkmeisje, which pours milk. Such an action always takes some time. You can almost stand in the place of the person in the painting. As if you were there,” the restorer tells AD.
Three works normally exhibited at the Mauritshuis, including the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring, will remain at the Rijksmuseum for the next few weeks; the most famous painting for only eight weeks.
The great attention for Vermeer is also due to the fact that the marketing operation set up around the event worked great, Iris Frederix, painter and television coach told AD. “This year is Vermeer year, there will be a new TV show about Vermeer, and there is also a lot of promotion abroad; people come from Asia to see Girl with a Pearl Earring.”
Furthermore, Vermeer produced relatively little, he still tells the Rotterdam portal: “About 45 paintings, some of which are no longer there”. A real pop star but with a rather limited number of works, if you think that Rembrandt produced over 300.