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​ Johannes Vermeer

kjs on 27th May 2022

His Early Days

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675), also rendered Jan, was born in Delft, Netherland. His parents were weavers by profession and his father was also an art dealer. The family was reasonably prosperous and independent financially. Vermeer later married Catherine Bolnes and gave birth to as many as 15 offspring, of which, with four of them having died in infancy or childhood, 11 children survived. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful painter.

Vermeer, a Painter

Vermeer is especially known for his paintings of 17th century daily life. He made only 36 or so of his paintings during his 43 years life span. The later day Dutch painters and researchers have credited him with only these many paintings that have survived as of date. These 36 excellent pieces of his lifetime works of art are presently the greatest treasures that have adorned the walls of the world’s finest museums. Vermeer was not well-known outside his hometown Delft and Amsterdam until the late 19th century when a French critic reassessed his contribution to the world of art and brought them to the fore.

Famous for Daily Life Scenes

Surprisingly, little is known about the initial years of Vermeer’s life and about what made him choose the path of a painter. Though he registered himself as a master painter with the Delft Guild of Saint Luke in the year 1653, very little is known about the identity of his masters, the nature and duration of his training or apprenticeship. He began his career in the early 1650s by painting biblical and mythological scenes. But his later paintings depicting scenes of daily life in interior settings made him famous. He created some excellent paintings that eventually came to be rated among the most revered paintings in art history.

Ability to Manipulate Light and Colour

These paintings became remarkable because of his ability to manipulate light and color to lend to his artwork the qualities of a serene and timeless sense of dignity. According to one of the critiques of his artwork, he worked slowly and with great care and he frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly known for his masterly treatment and use of light and color in his work. It is largely observed from the background settings of his work that almost all his paintings are set in the small rooms, possibly two, in his house in Delft. The display of the same pieces of furniture and decorations set in different arrangements and often a portrayal of the same set of people, mostly women, are proof in support of this argument.

Some of the greatest artworks of Vermeer

Girl with a Pearl Earring

It is an oil painting by Vermeer made in the year 1665. It became known by its present name,’ Girl with a Pearl Earring‘, towards the end of the 20th century. This is said to be not a portrait but a ‘tronie’, a Dutch term for a character or type of person. The pearl is supposed to stand for purity and incorruptibility. The girl in the portrait hides her hair, reportedly for the reason that untied open hair represents the sensual side of her which she does not want to reveal to other people. However, his painting of Vermeer is ranked only 8th among his 10 top-ranked works.

The Lace Maker

Vermeer’s painting ‘The Lace Maker’ (1669-1670) depicts a woman bent in deep concentration over her craftwork with bobbins and pins in hand. This painting on a wood panel is one of his two smallest works, the other one being ‘Girl with a Red Hat’. The Lace Maker is ranked 10th among his 10 best paintings.

The Procuress

‘The Procuress’ (1656) is about a scene of so-called mercenary love otherwise known as sex work. The absence of Vermeer’s patent magical touch with light and color in this painting made many art lovers doubt if it was actually painted by Vermeer. Many also believe that the lighting effect in this painting, which is uncharacteristic of the signature Vermeer style, might be for serving the purpose of bridging the regions of darkness and light in the painting. This painting has been ranked 9th among his 10 best ones.

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (1662-65)

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is a depiction of a woman wearing a blue dress and reading a letter with her lips slightly parted as though to give an impression that she was taken aback by the contents of the letter. The picture is cast in a shadowy gloom that bears resemblance to the color of her dress. Many art lovers also think that the map hanging on the wall in the background may be suggestive of her longing for a distant lover from whom she had just received a letter with a surprise message.

The Little Street

The Little Street is the artist’s rendering of the goings-on, probably, in an alleyway in the Delfts township. What makes the painting special is the artist’s intense attention to the vivid architectural details of buildings lining the sides of the alleyway. The crisp and quintessential details of the painting ignited an intense discussion about if the allay in the portrayal is a real one or merely a hypothetical subject of the painting. This painting has been rated 8th among Vermeer’s top 10 art masterpieces.

The Milkmaid (1654-1658)

The Milkmaid, a brilliant piece of Vermeer’s painting is supposed to be a turning point marking the maturity in Vermeer’s styles from his early compositions. In the painting, a maid is seen pouring milk into a basin and the counter is littered with bread. It looks so much real, almost to the extent of being photographic, that many scholars have been led to believe that it was around this time that Vermeer started incorporating image capturing technology in order to better understand the effects of lights in painting.

In her essay “Women in Vermeer’s Home: Mimesis and Ideation, handling of paint in the Milkmaid, specifically the glistening light on the crusty bread, and its saturated colors have been taken as evidence of Vermeer’s near scientific study of vision and of the effects of the camera obscure”. This painting has ranked 5th among the top 10 Vermeer’s paintings.

Woman Holding a Balance (1662-1665)

‘Woman holding a Balance‘, one of the 10 best paintings of Vermeer, is the depiction of a woman standing at a corner of a dark room holding a scale in an equilibrium position as she weighs her jewellery left lying scattered on the table. A mild ray of sunlight coming from a window on the left side of the room highlights her hands. Experts are of the opinion that ‘more than it is visually pleasing, it means something which is what makes it rank among the best of Vermeer’. According to them, Vermeer uses the contrast of light and darkness in the painting to tell a tale of vanity and virtue, worldly pleasures and divine morality. This painting is ranked 4th among Vermeer’s ten best.

Girl with a Red Hat (1665-66)

‘Girl with a Red Hat‘, is said to be one of Vermeer’s two smallest paintings, the other one being ‘Girl with a Pearl Earrings‘. They both share a lot of similarities, such as the over-the-shoulder-gaze of the girls and the fanciful costumes painted in these pictures. As per Walter Liedtke’s highly appreciative comments in his book, Vermeer: The Complete Paintings, “for a painter who excelled in the observation of light there was hardly a more suitable vehicle than a subject like this one, with its comparisons of skin, silk and pearls, moist lips, soft and smooth fabrics, all shiny surfaces set against the duller tones and rougher gestures of the tapestry, which in addition to its complementary colors provides sympathetic shapes…”

In other words, Girl With a Red Hat gives an art enthusiast everything he wishes to see in a great piece of painting, such as undefinable mystery, gorgeously observed fabrics, high photographic quality, etc. This painting has been thought to be one of Vermeer’s greatest accomplishments and is rated third among his best ten.

View of Delft (1660-63)

Girl Interrupted at her Music (1658-1659)

‘Girl Interrupted at her music‘ is one of the baroque-style paintings of Johannes Vermeer. Baroque is a style of painting associated with the Baroque cultural movement which began in Italy in the 17th century. The typical character of baroque style is an art of depiction of drama, rich, deep color, and intense light and dark shadows. It is briefly put as a style of painting depicting the play of 5 such major elements as Motion, Space, Time, Dramatic use of Light and Passionate Theatricality.

‘Haute bourgeoisie’ Style

This Vermeer’s painting is a depiction of the typical 17th-century courtship and the importance of music in love among the people in the higher echelon of European society or ‘Haute bourgeoisie’. Since drinking wine was one of the social habits associated with social gatherings and expression of love, the wine glass, full and untouched, painted in the picture symbolizes the manifestation of the relationship between the man and the woman. The man’s fashionable attire shows him as hailing from the upper class of society.

His ingenious ‘Painting in the Painting’ style

The multi-paned window painted on the life side of the room provided the source of light for the scene. This layout design has been used by Vermeer in some of his other paintings such as The Music Lesson, The Girl With the Wine Glass, The Glass of Wine, etc. The chairs with such minute details as ‘lion head’ carving and brass studs were typical of the furniture during that time and are thought to have been sourced from Spain. The wall painted in dark colors behind the man and the girl at the table and the beams of light coming through the window on the left side show a hazy ‘painting in the painting’ of Cupid, the god of desire.

The Art of Painting

The Art of Painting is considered to be good enough to be at the topmost notch in any painting rating list. This is one of Vermeer’s larger paintings, measuring roughly 40″ by 47″ and it is also one of his marvelous artworks in which he had given expression to his intellectual ambitions in painting. As Eric Jan Sluijter argues, Vermeer’s Art of Painting is meant specifically to display the superiority of its own medium over other art forms.

Recognition of Vermeer’s Artwork

In 1653, Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, a trade association for painters. That being a year fraught with disasters like the plague, war, and economic crisis, Vermeer was, reportedly, experiencing financial difficulties and, hence, he could not pay the usual admission fee to the guild. This fact was revealed by the guild’s records. The subsequent year, 1654, brought in another catastrophe in the form of a terrible explosion that destroyed a large section of the city and further aggregated Vermeer’s financial problems.

One Among His Peers

Later on, in the year 1657, he is thought to have found a patron in the form of an art collector to help him to tide over the financial difficulties temporarily. Further, he also started charging prices higher than the average prices for his paintings. In the year 1662, Vermeer was elected head of the Guild and was re-elected in the subsequent three years. That was proof enough of the fact that he had by then established himself as the one among his peers.

Economic downturn affecting his life and work

He was reported to have produced about three paintings a year on order and that was considered a job bit slower compared to the other noted painters of that time span. In the early 1670s, a severe economic downturn struck the Netherlands after the French army invaded the country. Immediately after that, the Dutch Republic had to face another onslaught by the neighbouring counties, this time by the English fleet, causing further destruction to the Dutch economy. The economic hardships lasted for nearly 5 years before the circumstances in the country started to improve.