Johannes Vermeer Totally Explained

Everything about Johannes Vermeer totally explained

Johannes Vermeer or Jan Vermeer (baptized October 31 1632, died December 15 1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary life. His entire life was spent in the town of Delft. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial painter in his lifetime. He seems to have never been particularly wealthy, perhaps due to the fact that he produced relatively few paintings, leaving his wife and eleven children in debt at his death.
Virtually forgotten for nearly two hundred years, in 1866 the art critic Thoré Bürger published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him (only 35 paintings are firmly attributed to him today). Since that time Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he's now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work.

Life

Relatively little is known about Vermeer's life. He seems to have been exclusively devoted to his art. The only sources of information are some registers, a few official documents and comments by other artists; it was for this reason that Thoré Bürger named him "The Sphinx of Delft". Vermeer is the subject of a biography by John Michael Montias: Vermeer and his milieu: a web of social history (Princeton, 1989), where the social history covers up for the elusiveness of the central character.

Youth

Johannes Vermeer was born in 1632, in the city of Delft in the Netherlands. The precise date of his birth is unknown but it's known that he was baptised on October 31, 1632, in the Reformed Church. Reynier Jansz., his father was a lower middle-class silk or caffa worker. In 1615 he married Digna Baltens, a woman from Antwerp. In 1625 he was involved in a fight with a soldier, who died three days later. Around 1631 he hired an inn, called the Flying Fox; Vermeer also started in that year to trade art. In 1641, when the lease ran out, his father bought a large inn at the market square in Delft, named after the homonymous Belgian town, "Mechelen". His daughter Gertruy, who helped her parents, serving drinks, married a sought after framemaker in 1647. When Reynier Jansz. died in 1652, Johannes Vermeer inherited the inn and replaced his father as a merchant of paintings.

Marriage and family

Despite the fact that he came from a Protestant family, in April 1653 he married a Catholic girl, named Catherina Bolnes. It was an unlikely marriage: his future mother-in-law, a member of the Gouda Thins' family who had moved to Delft, was significantly wealthier. For Vermeer it was a good match and he converted to Catholicism shortly before their marriage. His children were named after Catholic saints rather than his own parents. One of his early paintings, The Allegory of Faith, reflects Catholic belief in the Eucharist, though whether that's the artist's or that of a commissioning patron is unknown. Soon after their marriage, the couple left the Mechelen and moved in with Catherina's mother. Vermeer would live there with his wife and children for the rest of his life, working in the front room on the top floor.
The domineering mother-in-law apparently played an important role in their life. After Vermeers death she stated that she used her income to help support the struggling painter and his growing family. Maria Thins was a devotee of the Jesuit order in the Catholic Church, and this, too, seems to have influenced Johannes and Catherina, for they called their third son Ignatius, after the founding saint of the Jesuit Order. Vermeer and his wife had fourteen children in total, three of whom predeceased him.

Career

Vermeer was apprenticed as a painter, but it isn't certain where he studied, nor with whom. It is possible he taught himself or he'd information from one of his father connections. It is generally believed that he studied in Delft and it's suggested that his teacher was either Carel Fabritius or likelier Leonaert Bramer.
   On December 29, 1653, Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, a trade association for painters. The guild's records, which indicate that he couldn't initially pay the admission fee, hint that Vermeer had financial difficulties. In later years he might have got a patron in the local art collector Pieter van Ruijven. This is assumed as van Ruijven's son in law Jacob Dissius had 21 Vermeer paintings listed in his heritage in 1695. In 1662 Vermeer was elected head of the guild and was reelected in 1663, 1670, and 1671, evidence that he was considered an established craftsman among his peers, and a respectable middle-class citizen. Vermeer worked slowly and it probably took him three or four months to finish a painting. When Balthasar de Monconys visited him in 1663 to see some of his work, he was sent to the baker, who owned three paintings in exchange for free bread.
   However, a severe economic downturn struck the Netherlands after 1672 (the "Rampjaar"), when the French invaded the Dutch Republic in what was later known as the Franco-Dutch War. This led to a collapse of the art-market, and consequently damaged Vermeer's business both as a painter and an art dealer. Also his mother-in-law got into financial difficulties: her land near Schoonhoven was flooded to prevent the French army crossing the Dutch Water Line. With a large family to support, Vermeer was forced to borrow money.
   When Johannes Vermeer died within two days in december 1675, he left Catherina and their children with very little money and several debts. In a written document his wife attributed her husband's death to the stress of financial pressures. Catherina asked the city council to take over the estate, including paintings, in order to pay off the debts. The Dutch microscopist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who worked for the city council, was appointed trustee in 1676. The house was filled with paintings, (Vermeer did own three paintings by Fabritius), drawings, clothes, chairs and beds. In his atelier there were among rummage not worthy being itimized, two chairs, two painter's easels, three palets, ten canvases and a desk. Nineteen of Vermeer's paintings were bequeathed to his wife and her mother; Catherina sold some of these paintings to pay creditors.
   In Delft, Vermeer had been a respected artist, but he was almost unknown outside his home town, and the fact that a local patron, van Ruijven, purchased much of his output reduced the possibility of his fame spreading. Vermeer never had any pupils and his relatively short life, the demands of separate careers, and his extraordinary precision as a painter all help to explain his limited output.

Technique

Vermeer produced transparent colours by applying paint onto the canvas in loosely granular layers, a technique called pointillé (not to be confused with pointillism). No drawings have been securely attributed to Vermeer, and his paintings offer few clues to preparatory methods. David Hockney, among other historians and advocates of the Hockney-Falco thesis, has speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura to achieve precise positioning in his compositions, and this view seems to be supported by certain light and perspective effects which would result from the use of such lenses and not the naked eye alone; however, the extent of Vermeer's dependence upon the camera obscura is disputed by historians.
   There is no other seventeenth century artist who from very early on in his career employed, in the most lavish way, the exorbitantly expensive pigment lapis lazuli, natural ultramarine. Not only used in elements that are intended to be shown as appearance: the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light from the strongly-lit interior, reflecting its multiple colours back onto the wall.
   This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer’s understanding of Leonardo’s observations that the surface of every object partakes of the colour of the adjacent object. This means that no object is ever seen entirely in its natural colour.
   A comparable but even more remarkable yet effectual use of natural ultramarine is in The Girl with a Wineglass (Braunschweig). The shadows of the red satin dress are underpainted in natural ultramarine, and due to this underlying blue paint layer, the red lake and vermilion mixture applied over it acquires a slightly purple, cool and crisp appearance that's most powerful.
   Even after Vermeer’s supposed financial breakdown following the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) in 1672, he continued to employ natural ultramarine most generously, such as in "Lady Seated at a Virginal." This could suggest that Vermeer was supplied with materials by a collector, and would coincide with John Michael Montias’ theory of Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven being Vermeer’s patron.

Themes

Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. His works are largely genre pieces and portraits, with the exception of two cityscapes.
His subjects offer a cross-section of seventeenth century Dutch society, ranging from the portrayal of a simple milkmaid at work, to the luxury and splendour of rich notables and merchantmen in their roomy houses. Religious and scientific connotations can be found in his works.

Influence of other painters

Carel Fabritius (1622–1654) who spent his final years in Delft. Vermeer's ideas about perspective, and his tendency to paint everyday themes were possibly influenced by Fabritius.
Italian painter Caravaggio (1573–1610), indirectly through Dutch followers.
Leonaert Bramer, another painter from Delft, and witness to his marriage.
Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, owned Dirck van Baburen's Procuress (or a copy of it), which appears in the background of two of Vermeer's paintings. The same subject was also painted by Vermeer in one of the artist's early works.

Works

Only three paintings are dated: The Procuress (1656, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie), The Astronomer (1668, Paris, Louvre), and The Geographer (1669, Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut). Two pictures are generally accepted as earlier than The Procuress; both are history paintings, painted in a warm palette and in a relatively large format for Vermeer — Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (Edinburgh, National Gallery) and Diana and her Companions (The Hague, Mauritshuis).
   After The Procuress almost all of Vermeer's paintings are of contemporary subjects in a smaller format, with a cooler palette dominated by blues, yellows and greys. It is to this period that practically all of his surviving works belong. They are usually domestic interiors with one or two figures lit by a window on the left. They are characterized by a serene sense of compositional balance and spatial order, unified by an almost pearly light. Mundane domestic or recreational activities become thereby imbued with a poetic timelessness (for example Woman Reading a Letter at an Open Window, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie). To this period also have been allocated Vermeer's two townscapes, View of Delft (The Hague, Mauritshuis) and A Street in Delft (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).
   A few of his paintings show a certain hardening of manner and these are generally thought to represent his late works. From this period come The Allegory of Faith (c 1670, New York, Metropolitan Museum) and The Letter (c 1670, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).
   The often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights in Vermeer's paintings have been linked to his possible use of a camera obscura, the primitive lens of which would produce halation and, even more noticeably, exaggerated perspective. Such effects can be seen in Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (London, Royal Collection). Vermeer's interest in optics is also attested in this work by the accurately observed mirror reflection above the lady at the virginals.
   Today, 35 paintings are clearly attributed to Vermeer, although in 1866, Thoré Burger attributed a list of 66 pictures to him. The known paintings are:

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655) - Oil on canvas, 160 x 142 cm, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Diana and Her Companions (1655-1656) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 105 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague

The Procuress (1656) - Oil on canvas, 143 x 130 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657) - Oil on canvas, 83 x 64,5 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

A Girl Asleep (1657) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Little Street (1657/58) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Officer with a Laughing Girl (c. 1657) - Oil on canvas, 50,5 x 46 cm, Frick Collection, New York

The Milkmaid (c. 1658) - Oil on canvas, 45,5 x 41 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman (1658-1660) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm,Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

The Girl with the Wineglass (c. 1659) - Oil on canvas, Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig

View of Delft (1659-1660) - Oil on canvas, 98,5 x 117,5 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague

Girl Interrupted at her Music (1660-1661) - Oil on canvas, 39,4 x 44,5 cm, Frick Collection, New York

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1663-1664) - Oil on canvas, 46,6 x 39,1 cm, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Music Lesson or A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman (1662/5) - Oil on canvas, 73,3 x 64,5 cm, Queen's Gallery, London

Woman with a Lute near a Window (c. 1663) - Oil on canvas, 51,4 x 45,7 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1662-1664) - Oil on canvas, 55 x 45 cm, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin

Woman with a Water Jug (1660-1662) - Oil on canvas, 45,7 x 40,6 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A Woman Holding a Balance (1662-1663) - Oil on canvas, 42,5 x 38 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

A Lady Writing a Letter (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 45 x 40 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Girl with a Pearl Earring (a.k.a. Girl In A Turban, Head Of Girl In A Turban, The Young Girl With Turban) (c. 1665) - Oil on canvas, 46,5 x 40 cm, Mauritshuis, The Hague

The Concert (1665-1666) - Oil on canvas, 69 x 63 cm, stolen in March 1990 from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Portrait of a Young Woman (1666-1667) - Oil on canvas, 44,5 x 40 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Allegory of Painting or The Art of Painting (1666/67) - Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Mistress and Maid (1667/68) - Frick Collection, New York

Girl with a Red Hat (1668) - National Gallery of Art, Washington

The Astronomer (1668) - Louvre, Paris

The Geographer (1668/69) - Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt am Main

The Lacemaker (1669/70) - Louvre, Paris

The Love Letter (1669/70) - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Lady writing a Letter with her Maid (1670) - Oil on canvas, 71,1 x 58,4 cm, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

The Allegory of Faith (1671/74) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The Guitar Player (1672) - Iveagh Bequest Kenwood House, London

Lady Standing at a Virginal (1673/75) - National Gallery, London

Lady Seated at a Virginal (1673/75) - National Gallery, London

Gallery

Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 004.jpg|Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (1654-1655) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 002.jpg|The Procuress (1656) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 022.jpg|Young woman sleeping (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) (1656-1657) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 023.jpg|Officer and a Laughing Girl (Frick Collection, New York) (1657-1659) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 003.jpg|Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (1657-1659) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 025.jpg|The Little Street (1657/58) Image:Jan_Vermeer_van_Delft_021.jpg|The Milkmaid (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (c. 1658) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 018.jpg|The Wine Glass (1658-1661) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 006.jpg|The Girl with a Wine Glass (1659-1660) Image:Vermeer-view-of-delft.jpg|View of Delft (Mauritshuis, The Hague) (1660-1661) Image:Vermeer Girl Interrupted at Her Music.jpg|Girl Interrupted at her Music (1660-1661) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 014.jpg|The Music Lesson (1662) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 019.jpg|Young Woman with a Water Pitcher (1662-1663) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 016.jpg|The Lacemaker (Louvre, Paris) (1664) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 008.jpg|Woman with a Pearl Necklace (1664) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 012.jpg|Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (after 1664) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 015.jpg|Woman Holding a Balance (1665) Image:Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) - The Girl With The Pearl Earring (1665).jpg|The Girl with the Pearl Earring (Mauritshuis, The Hague) (1665) Image:Vermeer The concert.JPG|The Concert (1665-66) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 020.jpg|Girl with a Flute (1665-1670) Image:Vermeer Allegory-of-the-Painting.jpg|The Allegory of Painting (1666-1667) Image:Vermeer Lady Maidservant Holding Letter.jpg|Lady with her Maidservant Holding a Letter (1667) Image:Vermeer-Portrait of a Young Woman .jpg|Portrait of a Young Woman (1665-67) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 009.jpg|The Geographer (1669) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 013.jpg|The Guitar Player (1669-1672) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 010.jpg|The Loveletter (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) (1670) Image:DublinVermeer.jpg|Lady writing a Letter with her Maid (1670) Image:Jan Vermeer van Delft 024.jpg|A Lady Standing at a Virginal (1670-1673) Image:Johannes Vermeer - Zittende Klavecimbelspeelster (1673-1675).jpg|A Lady Seated at a Virginal (National Gallery, London) (1672) A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (1670)

Disputed works

Saint Praxidis (c. 1655) - Oil on canvas, 102 x 83 cm, Private Collection

Girl with a Flute (1665-1670) - Oil on panel, 20 x 17,8 cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington

A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals (1670) - Wynn Las Vegas, Las Vegas

Portrait of a Woman (1655-1660) -

Forgeries

Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter who worked in the classic tradition. Initially seeking to prove that critics had underestimated his abilities as a painter, he decided to paint a fake Vermeer. Later, he forged more Vermeers and works of other painters to make money. Van Meegeren fooled the art establishment, and was only taken seriously after demonstrating his skills in front of police witnesses. His aptitude at forgery shocked the art world and complicated efforts to assess the authenticity of works attributed to Vermeer. After Van Meegeren's exposure in 1945 a wave of self-criticism surged through the world of art-museums and many so-called Old Masters disappeared from their walls. Examples are given in the Van Meegeren biography A New Vermeer, see references below.

Vermeer in other works

Vermeer's View of Delft features in a pivotal sequence of Marcel Proust's The Captive.

The book Girl with a Pearl Earring and the film of the same name are named after the painting; they present a fictional account of its creation by Vermeer and his relationship with the model.

The book Girl in Hyacinth Blue is about a fictional Vermeer painting of the same name, and the 2003 made-for-TV film Brush with Fate is based on the book.

The liqueur Vermeer Dutch Chocolate Cream Liqueur was inspired by and named after Vermeer and its bottle is embossed with his signature and has a logo incorporating the Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Salvador Dalí, with great admiration for Vermeer, painted his own version of The Lacemaker and pitted large copies of the original against a rhinoceros in some now-famous surrealist experiments. Dali also immortalized the Dutch Master in The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table, 1934.

The 2003 children's novel Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett describes the theft of A Lady Writing and has the authenticity of Vermeer's paintings as a central theme. Also, in the sequel to the book, The Wright 3.

Dutch composer Louis Andriessen based his opera, Writing to Vermeer (1997-98, libretto by Peter Greenaway), on the domestic life of Vermeer.

Greenaway's own film A Zed & Two Noughts (1985) contains a plot line about an orthopedic surgeon named Van Meegeren who stages highly exact scenes from Vermeer paintings in order to paint copies of them.

"Brush with Fate" was a made-for-TV film debuted on February 2, 2003, on CBS. It followed the life of an imaginary painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer as it passes through the hands of various people.

The book and film Girl, Interrupted take their title from the painting Girl Interrupted at her Music.

Jan Vermeer is the title of a song on Bob Walkenhorst's solo album, The Beginner (lyrics here

, song #6). Walkenhorst is the guitarist and principal songwriter for The Rainmakers.

All the Vermeers in New York, a film by Jon Jost

References and notes

Sources

Sheldon, Libby and Nicola Costaros (2005), Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Young woman seated at a virginal’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE, February 2006, Number 1235, Volume CXLVIII.

Schneider, Nobert (1993), Vermeer, Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, Köln.

Wadum, J., “Contours of Vermeer”, in Vermeer Studies. Studies in the History of Art, 55. Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Symposium Papers XXXIII, eds. I. Gaskel and M. Jonker. Washington/New Haven (1998), pp. 201-223.

Vermeer, Johannes. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 13, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: (External Link

Frederik H. Kreuger (2007) A New Vermeer, Life and Work of Han van Meegeren (ISBN 978-90-5959-047-2). Pages 54, 218 and 220 give examples of Van Meegeren fakes (or possible Van Meegeren fakes) that were removed from their museum walls. Pages 220/221 give an example of a non-Van Meegeren fake attributed to him: *(External Link

)

Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. (1981,1988) Jan Vermeer (ISBN 0-8109-1737-8). Contains history and color plates, or photographs, of nearly/all works along with commentary and history of them. Also includes background information on Vermeer and his time.