Vermeer’s “Jewish” Women?

Guest blog post by Vera Litvin

Over 300 years after his death, the Dutch painter Vermeer is still causing controversy, not least at the London Jewish Cultural Centre. BBC Art Critic Estelle Lovatt joined us to give us her take on Vermeer, exploring the Jewish element in his work. She argued that there was certainly a Jewish influence on Vermeer and that he would have been deliberately reaching out to a wealthy Jewish clientele with his paintings. He would have been aware of Rembrandt’s work which may have depicted patrons in the guise of ancient Israelites (a famous example is the “Jewish Bride” which seems to depict a couple of Rembrandt’s clients as Isaac and Rebecca).

The 'Jewish Bride' was painted by Rembrandt in 1667

However, Vermeer’s work does not deal with Jewishness in the same overt way. Instead, Lovatt argues, it gives us an image of the woman in the home, very much in keeping with the Jewish tradition of the “Eshet Chayil”.  As celebrated in the famous hymn of the same name, which is customarily recited on Friday evenings, the “Eshet Chayil” is a modest, God-fearing and capable woman. This description seems to fit many of Vermeer’s female portraits. Many of his subjects are modestly dressed, involved in some domestic occupation: be it a maid pouring milk, a lace-maker with her bobbins or a lady playing music. Their gaze is often modestly averted from us. The women are also frequently depicted in the home: in an enclosed, protected, feminine space.

Eshet Chayil? Was Vermeer producing work for a Jewish Audience? ('The Milkmaid' by Vermeer, circa 1658)

For Estelle Lovatt, Vermeer’s paintings of women for the most part provide “the feeling of a Friday night” even if none of the women are actually lighting Sabbath candles or are even Jewish. It is “the feeling of warmth, the feeling of peace, the feeling of making you welcome, the feeling of wanting to stay in that area with the woman.”  These images, she believes, would have appealed to Vermeer’s Jewish contemporaries.

Estelle Lovatt also touched on the work of modern Israeli artist Noa Lidor, who takes Vermeer as her starting point and goes on to create works of art that are radically different to his. Her sculptures, installations and drawings frequently use everyday, feminine objects such as thimbles, recorders and even bells to explore the role of the woman in the home.

Although some in the audience did not agree with Estelle’s analysis of Vermeer’s “Jewishness”,   I found it an eye-opening take. It also made me reconsider what we refer to as Jewish art. Is it, Estelle asks, art created by a Jew, or art depicting specifically Jewish topics, or can it perhaps simply be art which has a Jewish “feel” about it in some way? In this lecture, Estelle Lovatt certainly succeeded in challenging our preconceptions about an artist whom many of us feel we already know.