Girl in Hyacinth Blue, by Susan Vreeland.

In February, PLNU is hosting their annual Writers by the Sea conference, and Susan Vreeland will be one of the featured speakers. My English prof mentioned we’ll have to read something by a conference author next semester, so I decided to get it out of the way during break.

In striking similarity to Tracy Chevalier in Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vreeland weaves a story around Jan Vermeer and his art. Vreeland’s painting, though, is imagined, a canvas supposedly lost to history. Her novel begins in the present with its latest owner before traveling backward through time and culminating with Vermeer’s daughter, the sitter for the purported portrait. Each chapter is a self-contained chronicle of the painting’s effects on the people who encounter it.



“I couldn’t keep my eyes from the girl in the painting. What I saw before as vacancy on her face seemed now an irretrievable innocence and deep calm that caused me a pang,” admits a 19th-century possessor after she commits a decidedly un-innocent act. Many characters project their feelings onto the subject, a young girl seated before a window with sewing materials idly surrounding her.

Through the painting, Vreeland explores the power and impact of a masterpiece. One man squanders his relationships in his tortured devotion to the painting. A woman unwillingly sells it at her husband’s insistence, which irreparably mars her opinion of him.

What is the true power of a masterfully executed work? A painting, after all, is just delicately applied pigments. Could a mere image hold such overwhelming irresistibility, that it could drastically transform the lives of real people? True, not all its owners sever relationships over it. For some, the portrait functions as a minor player in their domestic drama, the memory of a lost love, or the means of obtaining a substantial sum of money. But for many, the painting illuminates the hazy, undefined areas of their lives, casting light on unnamed longings or personifying inner conflicts.

Because the viewers often create their own meanings, is the artist’s intent irrelevant? Vreeland does not make any declarations. Often in the novel, the art serves merely as the catalyst for the varied reactions of those who behold it. Most significant, though, is the fact that the portrait changes these individuals. The power of the work of art comes in its mystifying ability to impact the beholder. Vreeland seems to say that in this way, a painting can alter the world.