Art

I’m Watching One of My Life-long Dreams Pass Me By

There will never be another opportunity like this for Vermeer lovers

This art book contained poster prints of many of Vermeers’ most famous works. I display the book in my dining room and have hung the prints, too. That’s The Milkmaid on the wall. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

None of us gets everything we want. Lovers leave us. Jobs we desperately wanted go to someone else. Bad things happen that break our hearts.

So I hope I don’t sound too frivolous when I say how sad I am that I can’t make it to the Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

I’m a Vermeer groupie.

Het Melkmeisje, or The Milkmaid, has always spoken to me. Johannes Vermeer was one of the old masters of the Dutch Golden Age, and one of the things I love about so many of his paintings is that most of them are not portraits of rich people or scenes from the Bible, as so many of the paintings of the time seem to be.

A lot of his subjects are ordinary women engaged in domestic life, which probably helps explain why Vermeer died penniless. There was no doubt much more money to be made from commissions from churches and wealthy people.

You know that kitchen maid didn’t commission a portrait of herself.

She’s just standing there, making the humblest of meals — pouring milk over bread. I know from being…