A Facade with Fish and Birds

Unique gift relating to Escher’s tile tableau on an Amsterdam villa

M.C. Escher is world-famous for his optical illusions, but it is less well-known that he also made public artworks. In the winter of 1959-60, he designed a tile tableau with fish and birds, inspired by his famous print Sky and Water I (1938), for a villa at Dirk Schäferstraat 59 in the south of Amsterdam. It was commissioned by Wolbert J. Vroom, a great admirer of Escher’s work, who was looking for a black-and-white image to decorate the facade of his newly built home.

The Vroom family has recently donated two previously unseen Escher drawings for this project to the museum plus the extensive correspondence relating to the commission and family photos of the unveiling of the tableau, which Escher attended. These objects give us a glimpse behind the scenes of the creation of a unique work in Escher’s oeuvre.

An Escher or nothing

Wolbert J. Vroom and his wife Antonia H.M. Dreesmann contacted Escher in 1959. They had been living in their new villa on Dirk Schäferstraat for almost a year and wanted to enliven its facade with a work of art. They briefly considered a mosaic but thought Escher’s black-and-white work better suited to the building’s modern architecture. When Dreesmann showed her husband a reproduction of Escher’s 1956 work Swans (White Swans, Black Swans), there was no doubt about the way forward. Vroom later wrote to Escher: ‘We (my wife and I) are both enthusiastic about your work and it is to be an Escher or nothing.’

Escher proposed to base the tableau on his print Sky and Water I, in which fish gradually metamorphose into birds. The diamond-shaped design would introduce a diagonal dynamic to the modern villa’s orthogonal lines and Escher’s tessellations would lend themselves well to an arrangement of tiles. Escher soon enlisted the ceramics factory De Porceleyne Fles (now Royal Delft) to make the tiles. He had collaborated with them on tiled columns for the Maris College in The Hague and would do so again a decade later for a project at a secondary school in Baarn.

After a process of several months, the tableau was delivered in the spring of 1960 and unveiled in the presence of the clients, the villa’s architect Lau Peters and Escher. The commissioned larger tableau can still be seen on the villa on Dirk Schäferstraat.

Unknown drawings

The core of the gift comprises two unknown drawings that shed a special light on the design process. One of the design drawings shows the search for the right composition for the facade. Escher came up with two variants, one with a horizontal emphasis, the other vertical. He made a drawing of the facade and covered the horizontal design with a flap of paper with the vertical version, enabling an easy comparison of the two options. This should have made it simple for the Vrooms to reach their decision but the extensive correspondence between Escher, Vroom, De Porceleyne Fles and the architect Lau Peters, included in the gift, reveals tensions surrounding this important choice. There was a lengthy discussion between the various parties about which design it should be. The architect favoured the vertical variant, which would accentuate the building’s height, but Vroom and Escher stood firm. In the end, it was the horizontal diamond-shaped design that was chosen.

Escher elaborated the design in a more detailed drawing, on which he numbered the seventy-five tiles with his famous precision. The arrow indicates where Escher’s monogram MCE should be placed. The fabricator, De Porceleyne Fles, could now set to work. Although the process was not without some ruffles, all parties were ultimately enthusiastic about the result, as is evident from a letter from De Porceleyne Fles to Vroom: ‘We all agree that this tableau will truly be a jewel on your home.’

A commision to take home

For Escher this project had a personal sequel in the form of a lasting memento on his studio wall: a smaller tableau with the same tiles. But it was not initially self-evident that he would want this reminder of the project: although he enjoyed working on this exceptional assignment, at first Escher was dismissive. In 1959 he wrote to his son George and his wife Corrie: ‘There is a letter in the mailbox from the resident of a “villa” in Amsterdam South who wants to decorate his facade with tiles designed by me! It’s in the goddamned air, this tile nonsense.’ After a difficult experience with the tiled columns for the Johanna Westermanschool (now the Maris College) in The Hague, Escher was hesitant to start work on another design for tiles. But there is little of this reticence in his later correspondence with Vroom. Escher enjoys creating the instructional drawing of the different types of tiles and puts all his effort into achieving the best possible execution of his design. His enthusiasm for the end result is evident from the fact that he gladly received a smaller tableau from the Porceleyne Fles with the same tiles and hung it in his own studio for many years.

Escher was not the only one who was pleased with this small tableau. A sample of the tile tableau also hung in the showroom of De Porceleyne Fles, to show their customers the beautiful things they could make. When Abraham J. de Lorm, the director of the Gemeentemuseum Arnhem (now Museum Arnhem), visited De Porceleyne Fles in 1964, he saw the tableau in the showroom. He was very impressed and, with the permission of Escher and Vroom, had a smaller version made for the museum’s collection, which is identical to the tableau that Escher had in his studio. The sample tableau from the showroom of De Porceleyne Fles was purchased by the Dutch state around 1990 and is now in the collection of the Dutch Tile Museum in Otterlo.