Girl in Hyacinth Blue: Amazon.de: Susan Vreeland: Englische Bücher

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There are only 35 known Vermeers extant in the world today. In Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland posits the existence of a 36th. The story begins at a private boys' academy in Pennsylvania where, in the wake of a faculty member's unexpected death, math teacher Cornelius Engelbrecht makes a surprising revelation to one of his colleagues. He has, he claims, an authentic Vermeer painting, "a most extraordinary painting in which a young girl wearing a short blue smock over a rust-colored skirt sat in profile at a table by an open window." His colleague, an art teacher, is skeptical and though the technique and subject matter are persuasively Vermeer-like, Engelbrecht can offer no hard evidence--no appraisal, no papers--to support his claim. He says only that his father, "who always had a quick eye for fine art, picked it up, let us say, at an advantageous moment." Eventually it is revealed that Engelbrecht's father was a Nazi in charge of rounding up Dutch Jews for deportation and that the picture was looted from one doomed family's home:

That's when I saw that painting, behind his head. All blues and yellows and reddish brown, as translucent as lacquer. It had to be a Dutch master. Just then a private found a little kid covered with tablecloths behind some dishes in a sideboard cabinet. We'd almost missed him.

By the end of "Love Enough," this first of eight interrelated stories tracing the history of "Girl in Hyacinth Blue," the painting's fate at the hands of guilt-riddled Engelbrecht fils is in question. Unfortunately, there is no doubt about the probable destiny of the previous owners, the Vredenburg family of Rotterdam, who take center stage in the powerful "A Night Different From All Other Nights." Vreeland handles this tale with subtlety and restraint, setting it at Passover, the year before the looting, and choosing to focus on the adolescent Hannah Vredenburg's difficult passage into adulthood in the face of an uncertain future. In the next story, "Adagia," she moves even further into the past to sketch "how love builds itself unconsciously ... out of the momentous ordinary" in a tender portrait of a longtime marriage. Back and back Vreeland goes, back through other owners, other histories, to the very inception of the painting in the homely, everyday objects of the Vermeer household--a daughter's glass of milk, a son's shirt in need of buttons, a wife's beloved sewing basket--"the unacknowledged acts of women to hallow home." Girl in Hyacinth Blue ends with the painting's subject herself, Vermeer's daughter Magdalena, who first sends the portrait out into the world as payment for a family debt, then sees it again, years later at an auction.

She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.

In this final passage, Susan Vreeland might be describing her own masterpiece as well as Vermeer's. --Alix Wilber -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

From Booklist

Reading Vreeland's new book is like opening up a Chinese box: each chapter reveals a new layer of meaning and import. The "novel" follows the trail of an "unknown" painting by the Dutch master Vermeer--The Girl in Hyacinth Bluefrom the time of its creation in seventeenth-century Holland to the present day. In each of the eight independent but chronologically linked chapters, the painting shows up as a prop in the lives of different owners, and in telling the circumstances under which these people acquire or lose the painting, Vreeland gives the readers a sense of the evolution of Dutch social history. The first chapter opens with the discovery of the painting in the basement of a mathematician. It turns out that he inherited it from his father, who was a Nazi looter in Holland during World War II. The second chapter features the circumstances of the Jewish family from whom the painting was stolen. The remaining chapters take the readers further back into Dutch history until the final, or rather the original, moment when Vermeer decided to paint the portrait of his daughter, a young girl dressed in hyacinth blue. True to the spirit of Vermeer, Vreeland uses art as a vehicle for capturing special moments in the lives of ordinary people; true, too, to Vermeer's legacy, she creates art that brings a unique pleasure into the lives of ordinary readers. Veronica Scrol -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

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This novel is a masterpiece 19. Juli 2000

Von Ein Kunde

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

This is truly fantastic collection of stories. The fact that Susan Vreeland focuses not on technique or the actual process of painting allows the reader to focus on the emotions and actions of each of the painting's owners. The slightly disjointed nature of the stories and variations in writting style reflect the variations in characters themselves. The most wonderful thing about this entire book lies in the fact that all our questions are not answered and every thing does not tie up into a nice, neat little package. As a result, this novel a reflection of real life.

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A Lost Veremeer Portrait? 13. Juli 2000

Von Nancy R. Katz

In her book, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, the author Susan Vreeland presents her subject matter in a unique way. Focusing on an unknown Vermeer portrait, the author takes her readers from the present back to the time when the painting was actually done. But this premise isn't conveyed in the traditional manner of a flashback but rather as a series of inter-related stories as the painting goes backwards from the previous owner's hands to the next previous owner's hands.

Who knows what treasures lurk in an ordinary home? When an art professor is invited to a to the home of a colleague, he is shown what the owner says is an original Vermeeer which nobody knows anything about. How did this professor get the portrait, wonders the art professor and why is there no provenance or mention of it anywhere in the art world? Could this in fact be the 36th portrait done by Vermeer which somehow became lost over the centuries? And now the author has set us on a course as wevhead backwards in time. And among the periods of time we travel to are the early days of the rise of Hitler, then to the court of a count, to flooded areas of Holland and finally to Delft where we first meet Vermeer in the home of the man who has bought most of his paintings so that Vermeer can feed his 11 children. And finally we are there as Vermeer begins to paint his daughter Magdalena. And it is up to Magadalena to tell the story of what happens to Vermeer, her family, herself and and what happens to this very portrait in the future.

While I enjoyed this book, I did have some reservations. Close on the heels of reading Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier which also focuses on Vermeer, I felt that Girl in Hyacinth Blue lacked some of the wonderful descriptions of the artist and his craft. Whereas in Tracy Chaevaliers's book one could smell the paints and see Griet who served as Vermeer's model for the portrait with the pearl earrings and turban, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, seemed to gloss over these aspects concentrating on the characters in each story. And while the characters were well drawn, some of the stories failed to hold my interest as much as the others. But all in all, these were minor reservations and I would recommend this book to others who also enjoyed Girl With the Pearl Earring, the movie The Red Violin and even Jerry Seinfeld's espisode which also began with the end.

Dismal 17. Dezember 1999

Von Vermeer fan

While each of the vignettes suggests a possibly interesting story, none really lives up to the promise of the book. I think we all understand by now that morally unappealing people can and do own and enjoy beautiful works of art. I'm just sorry I had sit through Vreeland's novel to be reminded of it--I kept hoping it would finally get better, or there would be something to bring it all together, but there wasn't. Very disappointing.