Jacob Vrel

According to the Netherlands Institute for Art History (Dutch RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), Vrel was a member of the same "school" or artistic style as Pieter de Hooch, showing simple intimate scenes of daily life in towns, often including studies in perspective. Though no evidence for a specific "school" exists, the center of influence seems to have been in the artistic centers of Haarlem and Delft, for artists born during the years 1620–1630. The painters listed by the RKD in this category are Esaias Boursse, Hendrick van der Burgh, Pieter de Hooch, Pieter Janssens Elinga, Cornelis de Man, Hendrick ten Oever, and Jacob Vrel.[1] Seymour Slive names Vrel as among "those whose works have been confused with" Pieter de Hooch.[2]

Vrel's birthplace is unknown but he is considered to have worked in Delft and Haarlem. He is also referred to as Jan instead of Jacob(us) and known alternative spellings of his surname are Frel, Frelle, Vreele, Vrelle, and Vriel.[3] His works are sometimes confused with those by Esaias Boursse.[3]

Thirty-eight[4] to forty[5] paintings have been attributed to Vrel. A retrospective exhibition curated by Berndt Ebert of the Alte Pinakothek, in collaboration with the Fondation Custodia in Paris and the Mauritshuis in The Hague, opens late 2020.[6] Among the public collections holding works by the artist in their permanent collections are:

Young Woman in an Interior, ca. 1660. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

• Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Alleyway in a Dutch Town; Woman in Front of a Stove
• Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp: The Little Sick Nurse
• Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels: Interior with a Woman and a Child
• Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne: Interior with an Old Woman
• Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit: Interior
• Groniger Museum, Gronigen: Interior with a Man by a Fireplace
• Kunstthalle Hamburg: Street Corner
• Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille: The Weaver's Workshop
• Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid: Interior with Woman at a Stove
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford: The Little Nurse
• Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia: Street Scene, mid-17th century
• Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg: Street Scene
• San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego: The Little Sick Nurse
• Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna: Woman at a Window
• National Gallery of Art, Washington: Young Woman in an Interior, ca. 1660.
• Heylshof Museum, Worms: Two Cottage Women Conversing
• Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle: Interior with a Busy Woman, 1650.

• Théophile Thoré. "Van der Meer de Delft." Gazette des beaux-arts [suppl. is Chron. A.] 21 (1866): 458–470.
• Clotilde Brière-Misme. "Un 'Intimiste' hollandais: Jacob Vrel." Revue de l’art ancien et moderne 68 (1935): 97–114, 157–172.
• Gérard Regnier. "Jacob Vrel, un Vermeer du pauvre." Gazette des beaux-arts [suppl. is Chron. A.] n.s. 6, 71 (1968): 269–282.
• Peter Sutton, ed. Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting (exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gemäldegalerie, Berlin; Royal Academy, London, 1984): 352–354.
• Elizabeth Honig: "Looking in(to) Jacob Vrel." Yale Journal of Criticism 3, no. 1 (Fall, 1989): 37–56.

• 1 painting by or after Jacob Vrel at the Art UK site
• Jacob Vrel on Artnet