DOUBLE TAKE

Johannes Vermeer (Dutch, 1632–1675), Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, c. 1663, oil on canvas, 18.25 x 15.37 in. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. On loan from the City of Amsterdam (A. van der Hoop bequest).

Meadows Museum spotlights Johannes Vermeer’s influence on Salvador Dalí

BY NANCY COHEN ISRAEL

“D alí was unusually interested in Old Masters and was very candid about it. He had a ranking system for their work,” explains Amanda W. Dotseth, curator and director ad interim at the Meadows Museum. Salvador Dalí was particularly inspired by the Dutch 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer. As a teenager, Dalí received the entire Gowans’ Art Books series as a gift from his uncle. The Masterpieces of De Hooch and Vermeer was among his favorites in the 52-volume series, which was originally published in the early 20th century. This fall, the Meadows Museum will present Dalí/Vermeer: A

Dialogue. For the first time, Dalí’s painting, The Image Disappears (1938), will be shown alongside the work that inspired it: Vermeer’s

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (c. 1663). They will be on loan from the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figueres, Spain and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, respectively.

Vermeer’s influence stretches across Dalí’s oeuvre. From individual elements, ranging from anatomical limbs to period clothing to an all-out copy of Vermeer’s Lacemaker, completed as a commission for Robert Lehman in 1955, Dalí looked at the Dutch master’s work from a variety of angles, which he then translated into his own vernacular.

Seeing these brilliant works by the Spanish and Dutch artists side by side, the influence is unmistakable. In Vermeer’s work, an elegantly dressed woman, bathed in the natural light emanating from the window in front of her, stands at a table reading a letter. Between her presumed literacy and the map of the newly independent Netherlands on the wall behind her, it reflects the dynamic contemporary world in which it was created.

Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989), The Image Disappears, 1938, oil on canvas, 22.25 x 19.84 in. Work loaned by the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí. © 2022 Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Artists Rights Society.

Dalí’s work also reflects its time. Dotseth notes, “Dalí’s double images are a fascinating aspect of his brand of surrealism. It’s a game of one image fading in and out. It forces the viewer to make a choice.”

Furthermore, she says, “What Dalí riffs on is the composition.” The Image Disappears incorporates compositional elements found across Vermeer’s greater body of work, such as the curtain and the checkerboard floor, which are not present in Woman in Blue Reading a Letter. And while nodding to Vermeer compositionally, Dalí’s technique is spectacularly his own. Here, he refashions the 17thcentury Dutch interior while simultaneously using the language of 20th-century surrealism to create a double image. Transposing the map on the back wall into one of Spain further anchors it to his homeland.

Neither of these paintings is frequently loaned, Dotseth explains, making their Dallas debut all the more impressive. Additionally, she speculates, no one knows if Dalí ever saw Woman in Blue Reading a Letter in person or if his only knowledge came from the grainy black-and-white reproductions in the Gowans’ books. She adds, however, “Dalí is working in the moment in which images are traveling in ways they had not been before.”

This is the final exhibition conceived by Dr. Mark Roglán, the museum’s late director. It draws upon research that he did in preparation for the museum’s blockbuster exhibition in 2018, Dalí: Poetics of the Small, 1929-1936. The essay he wrote for that catalogue, exploring Vermeer’s influence on Dalí, served as a springboard for the current exhibition.

The museum’s vast Dalí collection includes several works on paper that also reflect Vermeer’s influence. These will be installed alongside the two paintings.

The museum also owns L’Homme Poisson (1930), the only painting by Dalí in a public collection in Texas, as well as the sculpture Venus de Milo with Drawers (1936), both of which will be on view.

The second installment of the museum’s Masterpiece in Residence series will run concurrently. This program, begun last spring, brings a Spanish masterwork from an American collection to the Meadows Museum. This fall’s iteration features Diego Velázquez’s King Philip IV of Spain (c. 1644), also known as the Fraga Philip, on loan from New York’s Frick Collection. It will be joined with the three works by the artist in the museum’s collection. “There will be four crackerjack paintings by Velázquez from different moments in his career in one gallery,” Dotseth enthuses.

The opportunity to simultaneously explore Dalí’s inspiration from Vermeer while placing him within the cultural patrimony embodied by the work of Velázquez makes this a unique moment in Dallas. It is one that Dalí himself would surely have relished. P