The Life and Work of Vermeer

Johannes Vermeer’s fame did not blossom till nearly two hundred years after his death, when he was rediscovered by a French art critic in 1866. Since then, Vermeer has been considered one of the greatest Dutch painters, even though other artists from the Netherlands in Vermeer’s day were much more prolific, producing hundreds of paintings. While Vermeer may have completed 45 or more, only 36 are known to exist today. As many as half of these were sold by Vermeer to a local art collector in Delft named Pieter van Ruijven, who presumably thought very highly of them, since he held onto them until his own death. Art historians hypothesize that Vermeer’s choice to keep a sole patron may have contributed to the obscurity and resulting poverty Vermeer and his family endured. When he died in 1675 at age 43, his wife was forced to sell his precious paintings to pay off debts and support their eleven surviving children.

Little is known about Vermeer, aside from what has been deduced from historical records about the important events in his life. No one even knows for certain what he looked like, as no self-portrait exists, though some art experts speculate that he painted himself as a gentleman with a lace collar holding a glass of wine in The Procuress. What is indisputable is the deep attention Vermeer paid to both light and color in all of his paintings. His earliest works, some of which portrayed religious themes, may have been influenced by Michelangelo Caravaggio, who combined the technique of painting strong contrasts of light and dark, calledchiaroscuro, with an up-close study of emotions. Vermeer continued to refine his own preoccupation with light and facial expression throughout his career. In each of his paintings, a source of light beams in from a window painted directly into a picture or beyond its edges, to bathe a subject with a glow of sun. He may have experimented with the effects of a camera obscura—a box with a lens used to produce an upside-down, though very clear, image—to create perfect geometric perspective. Vermeer painted mostly women, capturing them in the midst of performing ordinary acts, like glancing over a letter (Woman in Blue Reading a Letter) or pouring milk from a pitcher (The Milkmaid).

A Look at the Artist’s Life

Johannes Vermeer  was born in Delft in 1632 to Reynier Jansson and Dignum Balthasars. His father, Reynier, worked with silk, or caffa, and kept an inn. He was also an art dealer, a common combination with lodge-keeping in that time period. Perhaps Vermeer’s father had an influence on Vermeer’s art aptitude, and it is presumed that Vermeer was apprenticed as a young man for six years with an artist—the practice of the day—either in his hometown or in Amsterdam or Utrecht. Known also in his early years as Jan, this first name was used less regularly once he converted to Catholicism to marry Catharina Bolnes.

A recent novel and subsequent film depicting a fictional maid as a model for Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring portrayed Catharina in an unsubstantiated negative light.  While historians lack evidence for who Vermeer’s models were—his wife, his daughters, his sister-in-law, his maids, or others—it is thought that the sittings took place in his own studio. Vermeer rarely left the locale of Delft, other than for a possible art apprenticeship. At 21, Vermeer was admitted to Saint Luke’s Guild of Delft in December of 1653. A record exists of this, as well as his inability to pay the entire fee upon entering. A decade later, he was made vice-dean of the Guild, which indicates that he was well respected by his art colleagues.

Only three of his paintings are dated, making the task of placing works in a chronological sequence a challenge. Though Vermeer gained success in his realm of Delft collectors, his output was too small to gain a wider popularity and recognition. Poverty took hold of the Vermeer family, as the artist struggled to support them. In 1672, the situation worsened when the French army invasions began to affect the overall economy, collapsing the art market. Johannes and his family were forced to move in with Catharina’s mother, Maria Thins, who had been a familial support for many years. When Johannes died in 1675, Catharina wrote that events in the latter years had caused a devastating downward spiral for her husband.

The Evolution of Vermeer’s Techniques

In his earlier years as an artist, Vermeer applied a technique called impasto to his paintings, involving layering of paint thick enough to show brush strokes. Vermeer took pride in developing rich pigments to work with. Deep blues were accomplished in later works by using a more expensive powder from crushed semi-precious stones. In his later works, Vermeer applied glaze combinations to achieve more subtle surfaces.

  • Essential Vermeer.com provides a detailed chronology of what was thought to be Vermeer’s artistic development.
  • The Girl with a Pearl Earring, a concentrated study by Jonathan Janson, supports the idea that this particular painting can now be dated to a narrowed range of 1665-1667.
  • Jan Vermeer.org gives an account near the end of a biography of the techniques employed by Vermeer.

Images on Hosted Pages

Vermeer’s paintings can be viewed with the ease of the internet. Several resources are provided below for locating images of each of them.

 

  • Art of Europe, based in the UK, offers a gallery of thumbnail images from which to order prints and posters.
  • Artchive presents a list of Vermeer’s works in a timeline sequence, from 1656 to 1672.
  • Picsearch offers images of Vermeer’s works in thumbnails, many of which are linked to other pages with information (in various languages, but translatable).
  • WebMuseum, Paris maintains a page that includes a short biography of Jan Vermeer and links to in-depth observations on several of his paintings.

Museums

Vermeer’s 36 known paintings are now located in 17 various museums in the Europe and the United States. In 1990, The Concertwas stolen from Boston’s Isabella Gardner Museum and has yet to be recovered. Its worth is estimated at $200,000,000. Some resources for other Vermeer painting locations are offered below.

  • MetMuseum.org offers a slideshow of Vermeer’s paintings housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
  • National Gallery, based in London, maintains two of Vermeer’s works: A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal and A Young Woman Standing at a Virginal.
  • Rijksmuseum, located in Amsterdam, hosts several of Vermeer’s masterpieces.