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Girl in Hyacinth Blue
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Girl in Hyacinth Blue (1999) (edit title/settings)

by Susan Vreeland (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

This luminous story begins in the present day, when a professor invites a colleague to his home to see a painting that he has kept secret for decades. The professor swears it is a Vermeer--but why has he hidden this important work for so long? The reasons unfold in a series of events that... read more

Summary edit see section history

A series of vignettes traces ownership of a painting, suspected by its current owner of being the work of Johannes Vermeer. The story begins at a private boys' academy in Pennsylvania where, in the wake of a faculty member's unexpected death, math teacher Cornelius Engelbrecht makes a... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

A series of vignettes traces ownership of a painting, suspected by its current owner of being the work of Johannes Vermeer. The story begins at a private boys' academy in Pennsylvania where, in the wake of a faculty member's unexpected death, math teacher Cornelius Engelbrecht makes a surprising revelation to one of his colleagues. He has, he claims, an authentic Vermeer painting, "a most extraordinary painting in which a young girl wearing a short blue smock over a rust-colored skirt sat in profile at a table by an open window." His colleague, an art teacher, is skeptical and though the technique and subject matter are persuasively Vermeer-like, Engelbrecht can offer no hard evidence--no appraisal, no papers--to support his claim. He says only that his father, "who always had a quick eye for fine art, picked it up, let us say, at an advantageous moment." Eventually it is revealed that Engelbrecht's father was a Nazi in charge of rounding up Dutch Jews for deportation and that the picture was looted from one doomed family's home. A series of events traces the ownership of the painting back to World War II and Amsterdam, and still further back to the moment of the work's inspiration. As the painting moves through each owner's hands, what was long hidden quietly surfaces, illuminating poignant moments in multiple lives. Vreeland's characters remind us, through their love of this mysterious painting, how beauty transforms and why we reach for it, what lasts and what in our lives is singular and unforgettable.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “And they passed a place in their lives, he thought, where all these things--skiffs, gardens, dry land, love--could be maintained without conscious effort. (page 70)”
  • “She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her. (page 242)”

First Sentence edit see section history

Cornelius Engelbrecht invented himself.

Table of Contents edit see section history

1. Love Enough
2. A Night Different From All Other Nights
3. Adagia
4. Hyacinth Blues
5. Morningshine
6. From the Personal Papers of Adriaan Kuypers
7. Still Life
8. Magdalena Looking

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Susan Vreeland (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: MacMurray & Beck
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: 1999
ISBN: 1878448900
Page Count: 242

Classification edit see section history

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