Girl with a pearl earring /cTracy Chevalier.
By: Chevalier, Tracy.
Material type: BookPublisher: London : HarperCollins, 2000Description: 249 p. ; 20 cm.ISBN: 0006513204.Subject(s): Vermeer, Johannes, 1632-1675 | Painting -- 17th century -- Netherlands | Delft (Netherlands)DDC classification: 813.54Item type | Current library | Call number | Copy number | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds |
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General Lending | MTU Crawford College of Art and Design Library Lending | 813.54 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | 1 | Available | 00055061 |
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813.5 KER On the Road / | 813.5 TAN Abyss / | 813.52 The Wizard of Oz : the official 50th anniversary pictorial history / | 813.54 Girl with a pearl earring /cTracy Chevalier. | 813.54 Leviathan / | 813.54 What I loved : a novel / | 813.54 The inner life of Martin Frost : from the book of illusions / |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
OVER FIVE MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
'A phenomenon' Jessie Burton
'Dazzling' Daily Mail
'Truly magical' Guardian
Those eyes are fixed on someone. But who? What is she thinking as she stares out from one of the world's best-loved paintings?
Johannes Vermeer can spot exceptional beauty. When servant girl Griet catches his eye, she soon becomes both student and muse. But then he gives her his wife's pearl earrings to wear for a portrait, and a scandal erupts that could threaten Griet's future...
Vivid and captivating, this timeless modern classic has become a successful film and an international bestseller, with over 5 million copies sold around the world; now with a new introduction by the author.
'A veritable work of art... one of those rare novels where all the decisions made by the author appear inevitable and right' Rose Tremain
'Timeless, delicate and as exquisitely measured as one of Vermeer's paintings. Tense yet perfectly-paced and filled with the beauty of life's colours, Girl with the Pearl Earring is a masterpiece in its own right. Just a phenomenon. I will hold this novel close for the rest of my life' Jessie Burton, author of The Minaturist
'If ever a novel rightly deserves its "five millions copies sold" achievement, it is this dazzling little masterpiece ... Absolute magic' Daily Mail
'A portrait of radiance...Tracy Chevalier brings the real artist Vermeer and a fictional muse to life in a jewel of a novel' Time
'Chevalier doesn't put a foot wrong in this triumphant work ... It is a beautifully written tale that mirrors the elegance of the painting that inspired it' Wall Street Journal
'A wonderful novel, mysterious, steeped in atmosphere, deeply revealing about the process of painting...truly magical' Guardian
'It is no wonder that this beautifully-written story has sold more than five million copies and been made into a successful film. An absolute triumph' Woman's Weekly
The Dutch painter Vermeer has remained one of the great enigmas of 17th-century Dutch art. Whilst little is known of his personal life, his extraordinary paintings of natural and domestic life, with their subtle play of light and colour, have come to define the Dutch Golden Age. The mysterious portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has fascinated art historians for centuries, and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier's novel of the same title.
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Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Set in 17th-century Delft, this historical novel intertwines the art of Johannes Vermeer with his life and that of a maiden servant in his household. From the few facts known about the artist, Chevalier creates the reality of the Netherlands. The parallel themes of tradesman/artist, Protestant/Catholic, and master/servant are intricately woven into the fabric of the tale. The painters of the day spent long hours in the studio, devising and painting re-creations of everyday life. The thrust of the story is seen through the eyes of Griet, the daughter of a Delft tile maker who lost his sight and, with it, the ability to support his family. Griet's fate is to be hired out as a servant to the Vermeer household. She has a wonderful sense of color, composition, and orderliness that the painter Vermeer recognizes. And, slowly, Vermeer entrusts much of the labor of creating the colored paints to Griet. Throughout, narrator Ruth Ann Phimister gives a strong performance as the enchanting voice of Griet. Highly recommended. Kristin M. Jacobi, Eastern Connecticut State Univ., Willimantic (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Publishers Weekly Review
The scant confirmed facts about the life of Vermeer, and the relative paucity of his masterworks, continues to be provoke to the literary imagination, as witnessed by this third fine fictional work on the Dutch artist in the space of 13 months. Not as erotic or as deviously suspenseful as Katharine Weber's The Music Lesson, or as original in conception as Susan Vreeland's interlinked short stories, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Chevalier's first novel succeeds on its own merits. Through the eyes of its protagonist, the modest daughter of a tile maker who in 1664 is forced to work as a maid in the Vermeer household because her father has gone blind, Chevalier presents a marvelously textured picture of 17th-century Delft. The physical appearance of the city is clearly delineated, as is its rigidly defined class system, the grinding poverty of the working people and the prejudice against Catholics among the Protestant majority. From the very first, 16-year-old narrator Griet establishes herself as a keen observer who sees the world in sensuous images, expressed in precise and luminous prose. Through her vision, the personalities of coolly distant Vermeer, his emotionally volatile wife, Catharina, his sharp-eyed and benevolently powerful mother-in-law, Maria Thins, and his increasing brood of children are traced with subtle shading, and the strains and jealousies within the household potently conveyed. With equal skill, Chevalier describes the components of a painting: how colors are mixed from apothecary materials, how the composition of a work is achieved with painstaking care. She also excels in conveying the inflexible class system, making it clear that to members of the wealthy elite, every member of the servant class is expendable. Griet is almost ruined when Vermeer, impressed by her instinctive grasp of color and composition, secretly makes her his assistant, and later demands that she pose for him wearing Catharina's pearl earrings. While Chevalier develops the tension of this situation with skill, several other devices threaten to rob the narrative of its credibility. Griet's ability to suggest to Vermeer how to improve a painting demands one stretch of the reader's imagination. And Vermeer's acknowledgment of his debt to her, revealed in the denouement, is a blatant nod to sentimentality. Still, this is a completely absorbing story with enough historical authenticity and artistic intuition to mark Chevalier as a talented newcomer to the literary scene. Agent, Deborah Schneider. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedSchool Library Journal Review
YA-A fictional account of how the Dutch artist Vermeer painted his masterpiece. In this splendid novel, the girl in the painting is Griet, the 16-year-old servant of the Vermeer household. The relationship between her and Vermeer is elusive. Is she more than a model? Is she merely an assistant? Is the artist's interest exaggerated in her eyes? The details found in this book bring 17th-century Holland to life. Everyday chores are described so completely that readers will feel Griet's raw, chapped hands and smell the blood-soaked sawdust of the butcher's stall. They will never view a Dutch painting again without remembering how bone, white lead, and other materials from the apothecary shop were ground, and then mixed with linseed oil to produce the rich colors. YAs will also find out how a maid from the lower class, whose only claim to pearls would be to steal them, becomes the owner of the earrings.-Sheila Barry, Chantilly Regional Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Booklist Review
Inspired by Vermeer's painting of the same name, Chevalier creates an elegant and intriguing story of how a young peasant girl came to have her portrait painted. It is seventeenth-century Holland, and 16-year-old Griet is obliged to take a job as a maid for the artist Vermeer after her father loses his eyesight in an accident. She does the laundry, cares for the six children, and cleans house, but her easy manner and natural artistic perceptions ingratiate her to Vermeer, and she finds herself drawn into his world--mixing colors, cleaning his studio, and standing in for his models. This new intimacy between master and servant crosses strict social divisions, inspires jealousy in his wife, Catharina, as well as the other maid, and sparks rumors in town. At the insistence of his patron, Vermeer paints Griet wearing his wife's pearl earring. When Catharina sees the painting, a scandal erupts, and Griet is forced to make some life-altering decisions. This is a beautiful story of a young girl's coming-of-age, and it is delightful speculative fiction about the subject in a painting by an Old Master. --Carolyn KubiszKirkus Book Review
England-based Chevalier's first US appearance is another novel based on a painting of Vermeer (see Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue, p. 998). The tale this time is told'alluringly indeed'by the housemaid who sat as model for the painting in question. Griet is only 16, in 1664, when she's hired as a maid in the grand Delft household of Johannes Vermeer, who practices the Catholic faith and has a family consisting of wife, mother-in-law, cook, and 5 children (by story's end there will be 11). Griet's own faith is Protestant, and her humble family has been made even poorer since her father, a tile-painter, had an accident that left him blind. Hard-working and sweet-tempered Griet is taken on, then, partly as an act of charity, but the austere and famous painter is struck by her sensitive eye for color and balance, and after a time he asks her to grind paints for him in his attic studio'and perhaps begins falling in love with her, as she certainly does with him. Let there be no question, however, of anything remotely akin to declared romance, the maid's station being far, far below the eminent painter's, not to mention that his bitterly jealous wife Catharine remains sharply resentful of any least privilege extended to Griet'a complication that Vermeer resolves simply through intensified secrecy. There's a limit, though, to how much hiding can be done in a single house however large, and when Griet begins sitting for Vermeer (his patron, the lecherous Ruijven, who has eyes'and hands'for Griet, brings it about), suspicions rise. That's as nothing, though, to the storm that sweeps the house and all but brings about Griet's very ruin when Catharine discovers that the base-born maid has committed the thieving travesty of wearing her pearl earrings. Courageous Griet, though, proves herself a survivor in this tenderhearted and sharp-eyed ramble through daily life'and high art'in 17th-century Delft. Another small and Vermeer-inspired treasure.Author notes provided by Syndetics
Tracy Chevalier was born on October 19, 1962 in Washington, D.C. After receiving a B.A. in English from Oberlin College, she moved to England in 1984 where she worked several years as a reference book editor. Leaving her job in 1993, she began a year-long M.A in creative writing at the University of East Anglia.She is the author of several novels including The Virgin Blue, Burning Bright, Remarkable Creatures, and The Last Runaway. Her novel Girl with a Pearl Earring was made into a film starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson.
(Bowker Author Biography)