A View of Delft: Vermeer and his Contemporaries [Hardcover]

Mr. Walter Liedtke (Author), Walter Liedtke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0300090536 | ISBN-13: 978-0300090536

This book is a collection of writings on aspects of painting in Delft during the period 1650-1675. Walter Liedtke, highly respected curator and scholar of Dutch and Flemish art, discusses at length the work of four artists: Carel Fabritius, Gerard Houckgeest, Pieter de Hooch, and Johannes Vermeer. Liedtke considers recent interpretations and research on these artists' works, exploring in particular the relationship between style and observation in their paintings. The book begins by examining the question of whether such a community or tradition as the 'Delft School' ever existed and by reviewing earlier opinions on the issue. The second chapter is devoted to Fabritius's small townscape A View in Delft, its reconstruction as an illusionistic image originally mounted in a perspective box, and the painting's significance in the narrow and in the broadest sense. In the third chapter, Leidtke focuses on a specialised genre in Delft, namely, views of actual church interiors, and offers another explanation of how naturalistic paintings, even those that carefully record existing sites, inevitably depend upon pictorial precedents. The fourth chapter on De Hooch and the "South Holland" tradition of genre painting prepares the way for the fifth, a look at Vermeer's early work. In the final chapter, the author considers Vermeer's work as a mature artist, one who has completely mastered his means.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Liedtke, the curator of European paintings at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, has produced a book that is broad in scope but refined in detail. He reviews the artists who resided in Delft or "South Holland," as Liedtke chooses to refer to the area between the years 1650 and 1675. Following close on the heels of the recent "Vermeer and the Delft School" exhibit at the Met, this book, though conspicuous in both proximity and theme to the exhibit, is not a catalog of the works therein. Here Liedtke, who also wrote Vermeer and the Delft School (LJ 6/15/01), which served as catalog, examines how perception and style interact and concentrates on examining works with a strong fidelity to visual experience, such as Carel Fabritius's townscape A View in Delft and Gerard Houckgeest's Nieuwe Kerk in Delft with the Tomb of William the Silent. He shows the Delft artists to be conventional men immersed in and affected by their culture. Though he discusses many obscure artists, Liedtke peruses the work of Vermeer, Fabritius, and Pieter de Hooch in detail. Unfortunately, his writing makes for a less than pleasurable experience. Expecting a great deal of erudition on the part of the reader, the work, like the art discussed, is pedantic and scrupulous in detail, but Liedtke's writing style makes little effort to be vivacious or even interesting. This is redeemed somewhat by the superb catalog of artwork, which contains 32 color and 320 black-and-white images, including several fold-out reproductions. The quality of the copies, especially the color plates, is high. Libraries will better serve themselves in acquiring Liedtke's excellent catalog of the exhibit, mentioned above, which has 225 color plates and presents an interesting analysis as well, giving a history of the Delft city while debunking myths about the city as unsophisticated. The work in hand is recommended only for large art history collections and academic libraries. Adam Mazel, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Publisher

Distributed for Waanders Publishers, Zwolle

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300090536
• ISBN-13: 978-0300090536
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 9.7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,732,979 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)