VALUABLE PAINTING.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 121, 22 April 1938, Page 7

VALUABLE PAINTING.

DISCOVERY IN HOLLAND. PURCHASED FOR £62,000. ; LONDON, April 21. The Daily Telegraph’s Rotterdam correspondent says that, forced to sell some property, a Dutch family living in modest circumstances in Paris turned out from a linen cupboard an unframed picture which had been in the family’s possession .for 260 years. Its size was 36 by 44 inches, and it represented Christ with His disciples. The picture was sent to a Dutch expert, Dr. Bredius, who declared it to be a fine specimen of the work of the sixteenth-century painter, Vermeer. He later found Vermeer’s signature covered by thick varnish. Three patriotic Dutchmen purchased the painting for £62,000 and presented it to the Rotterdam Museum. Over three hundred years ago, in Delft, near The Hague, a boy was born who was to have his name inscribed on the illustrious scroll of Dutch painters and whose brilliant work was to reach the farthest cultural centres of the world. His native Delft was Uie home of tho famous pottery and china, and tradesmen there had, in the early part of, the 16th century, just begun their fine work which was also to earn its measure of fame. Jan van der Moor, or Jan van Delft Vermeer, was born on October 31, and he became a pupil of Carel I' abritius, who was a pupil of and only eight years Vermeer’s senior. Thus both Fabritius and his pupil bad knowledge of the technique of the master painter of that time. At his death he was found to have left 26 pictures undisposed of. and his widow had to apply to tho Court of insolvency to be placed under a curator, who was the naturalist, Leeuwenhoek. Then, for almost two centuries, the curtain drops, for Vermeer was, during that time, almost forgotten. Moreover, his pictures were sold under the names of the more popular, if less illustrious Dc Ilooch, Metsu, and Ter Borch, and tho great name of Rembrandt was also used on liis work. Recognition of his fine art really started when attention was drawn to his brilliance by an exiled Frenchman, named Thore, who gave a description of his works in “Musees do la Hollande.”