Jacobus Vrel

Book excerpt: An investigation into the art of a mysterious Dutch painter who left no written records behind. His paintings are curious, his figures introverted, and his street scenes strangely stage-like. Jacobus Vrel recorded everyday life in Holland during the seventeenth century and conjured his own idiosyncratic world at the same time. This volume presents the fascinating complete oeuvre of a painter whose works were thought in the nineteenth century to have been painted by Vermeer. Jacobus Vrel is like a phantom. No written sources describing the artist or his work have ever been discovered. His existence is documented only by some fifty surviving works which can hardly be compared with those of his contemporaries. His works, in their austerity and sometimes oppressive silence, seem unexpectedly modern, and have been compared to the paintings of Vilhelm Hammershøi. With detective-like investigative flair, and drawing on extensive technical examinations of the paintings, this book explores the mysterious pictures of this recently rediscovered painter.