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A previously "undiscovered" Vermeer is revealed and the author traces its ownership back in time to its origination. Each owner (or custodian) has a slightly different reason for wanting to keep the painting, and different reasons for letting it go. Each time it changes hands, the owner is pained to part with it. And still, for everyone it represents longing and wishes unfulfilled.
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This is a delightful story telling the journey of a painting presumably painted by the Dutch master Vermeer. It tells it's journey in reverse starting with it's present day owner who is a Math professor in Philadelphia and working it's way back to it's origins in The Netherlands where the daughter of the painter must relinquish her hold on it when her circumstances are dire.
We learn the stories of each person or family who has acquired the painting, their attachment to it and eventually how or ...more
We learn the stories of each person or family who has acquired the painting, their attachment to it and eventually how or ...more
Great read! Vreeland writes several short stories of a lost Vermeer painting and the people whose lives it touched. The stories are told from the present to long ago, back in time. This lost painting is a portrait of a young woman looking out a window, lost in thought, brilliantly clothed in hyacinth blues. The stories contain exquisite visual descriptions of his artwork and the everyday lives of ordinary women. I loved how Vreeland described color and how his paintings contained the "dust of cr
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I thought this was a very interesting concept for a book. How this one painting has many different kinds of stories to tell. How it was passed along through out the centuries and the different kinds of people who owned it and how the painting changed their life in some way and how some even loved it. I love how with art people see different things. Some people just view it as a "masterpiece" that is worth the money and others with imagination interpret the painting in their own way.
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First off, this is not a book to read if you're depressed and looking for something to entertain you. Each story is uniquely sad. Which is not to say the book isn't well written. It is. Vreeland begins with the possibility of previously unknown Vermeer in the possession of an unassuming math teacher at a boys prep school in the United States. From there she moves back through time in a series of short stories, each one revealing a little about the painting and the different people who owned it.
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From the Reading Group Discussion Guide: "Each chapter is a meditation on the joys and sorrows that bind the human heart into its inexorably mysterious relationship with art." I would have never come up with that articulation, but in reflecting upon the book, its so true. I really liked some of the chapters, my favorite being "Morningshine" when the painting and baby are discovered in an abandoned boat during a flood. And there's some infinitely sad chapters too, especially the last couple of ch
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May 16, 2010
Marla
marked it as bbc-suggestion
Mar 08, 2012
Sue
marked it as aa-to-read-list4
Jun 14, 2012
Katharine
marked it as to-read
Apr 29, 2013
Connie N.
marked it as to-read
Aug 02, 2015
Jim Townsend
marked it as to-read
Sep 07, 2015
Nell
marked it as on-my-shelves
Apr 07, 2018
Mary!
marked it as to-read
Feb 14, 2019
Carrie
marked it as to-read
