Girl with a Pearl Earring. By Tracy Chevalier

Girl With a Pearl Earring

Tracy Chevalier

A Plume Book. First published 1999.

Jan (or Johannes) Vermeer (1632-1675) was a Dutch painter, who lived in Delft, and who is counted among the Great Masters of Western art. He painted indoor scenes, representing people and activities from his own middle-class life. All his paintings, except one, appear to have been painted in his upper-story studio, most of the light coming in through a window on the left of painting. (The exception is the painting of a general view of Delft, which, too, may have been painted looking out of his studio window). 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' (1665) is reckoned as one of his masterpieces. It depicts a young girl from shoulder up, facing the window (not seen) and looking over her left shoulder at the painter. She has an entreating look in her large eyes, and on her clear and lovely face, as if surprised in some forbidden act. She is dressed in a rather drab coat of dull gold, and has a blue and cream turban wrapped around her head, completely covering her hair. At the center of the portrait is the eponymous pearl earring, consisting of a large, droplet-shaped pearl hanging by a nearly invisible hook from her left ear. The background is plain black, nothing to distract the viewer from the face, no clues on which to build a speculative story.

And this very fact allows Chevalier to construct the basic premise of her novel. The girl in the portrait, says Chevalier, is Griet, the sixteen-year old daughter of a maker of tiles. Her father has gone blind, and to supplement the dwindling family income, she is farmed out as a servant to the large Vermeer family in his rambling, poorly-heated house. One of her particular tasks there is to carefully clean the painter's studio, without in any way disturbing the layout of the paints, the still-life objects, the brushes, or the easel and canvas with its current half-finished painting. Over time, she attracts the attention of the painter to her more-than-ordinary sense of light and colour, and the painter appears to grow emotionally closer to her. Eventually he asks her to model for the painting that becomes 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'. This causes disquiet in the family. The earring is in fact a gift from Vermeer to his wife. It is painted in last, when Griet realizes that there is something crucial missing in the composition, and is unable to resist putting the earring on and posing for the final version of the painting. The story ends with Griet leaving the household, and marrying her childhood beau, the fishmonger Pieter. 

Chevalier's imagination is rather limited, and while her tale is apparently an authentic portrait of upper and lower middle class life in that place, at that time, it fails to grip, and is actually boring in parts. The promise of the exciting back story that a concentrated study of the painting promises is belied. I was left with a feeling of the author reaching out for more than she could grasp.