Travels in Vermeer by Michael White

Author:Michael White
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Persea
Published: 2014-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

4. Fifth Avenue

I cross Fifth Avenue in order to be next to the park as I float the next few blocks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. On such a high-spirited day—the cherry trees in blossom; Stuart Little’s pond a thicket of outsized, remote-controlled yachts; all the playgrounds going fulltilt—it might seem unlikely that I could simply walk next to the park and not go inside it, but I do. The rest of New York’s Vermeers, the rest of America’s Vermeers, are a couple of minutes away. The Met has more of them than any other museum in the world, five in all—and since the Frick and the Met are so close to each other, I can’t imagine any Vermeer lover not wanting to see all in one fell swoop, as I’m in the act of doing, this sunny, kite-flying afternoon.

My left elbow occasionally grazes the stone-and-mortar park wall. The top of it is peaked like the ridge of a house, and when I touch it, it feels like sandstone—faint grit lingering on the fingertip. Swept along on a tide of gratefulness that I can’t get to the bottom of, I amble purposefully. For once in my life, I’m precisely where I need to be, and I know it.

This is a little like walking through the streets of The Hague toward the Mauritshuis—toward The Girl with a Pearl Earring— except far better. It is as if, halfway through my journey, I find myself suspended midway on a bridge between two great collections of Vermeer, between two great museums, two worlds. I know every footstep on the root-buckled paving stones for the grace it truly is. I can go as fast or as slow as I want on this bridge of the present, so I choose to walk rather slowly.

Over the wall, in a playground there, two little girls about Sophia’s age are spinning together on a tire swing—the type held by three chains, with a swivel above. They whoop and shriek, pink sweaters and pigtails whirling straight outward with centrifugal force. Suddenly, I ardently wish Sophia were here.

I do what parents do at such times: I fantasize about a trip I intend to take with her, maybe in a year or two. A classic trip to the city; why hadn’t I thought of that before? But where will we go? The obvious places for kids are usually best: the Central Park Zoo, the Statue of Liberty, American Girl Place New York, a walk on the High Line. That should do it.

And yet my mind is restless. I’m still thinking about the Frick, especially about Officer and Laughing Girl. I’m trying to process what I’ve seen. I remember a phrase that Gowing uses in discussing this painting: he says it reflects an “unhappy jocularity.” Perhaps he is speaking more about genre—the procuresses, the leering, drunken soldiers of the “merry company” scenes—than the actual canvas. Certainly the officer is a hugely discomfiting figure, his great bulk exaggerated by the big black hat, and his enormous, crumpled right hand.

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