Girl in Hyacinth Blue
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Girl in Hyacinth Blue
Susan Vreeland
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 9, 2018
In this lovely and absorbing book, Susan Vreeland traces a putative Vermeer creation—Girl in Hyacinth Blue—backward in time through three centuries, from its theft by a Nazi officer through the hands of several owners to the studio of the artist himself. In a series of linked stories, Vreeland conveys the private lives and inscrutable emotions for which the mysterious, evocative figure of the painting stands as an emblem. Each story details a domestic drama in which “the momentous ordinary,” in the author’s phrase, is honored and ennobled, even as its characters—a family of Dutch Jews celebrating Passover the year before their deportation; a devoted couple consoled by the embrace of their long marriage; Vermeer’s daughter Magdalena, the model for the girl in the portrait—fall under the sway of history’s calamities and time’s indifference. Like the real paintings that are its inspirations, Girl in Hyacinth Blue is a quietly astonishing articulation of the evanescent emotions that convey enduring human truths.
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DreesReads
Nov 4, 2018
When people ask what I think the most underrated novel is, this is the book I always pick. And here it is!! One of my all-time favorites, I have read it forward and backward. Nothing can explain the art term "provenance" like this book. One of a kind.
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Jessica
Dec 12, 2024
enjoyed it
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