Artist of the day: Artist of the day, September 25: Vermeer, Dutch painter (Baroque)

Monday, September 25, 2017

Artist of the day, September 25: Vermeer, Dutch painter (Baroque)

Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer, (1632 – 1675) was a Dutch (Delft, Netherland) painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. Almost all his paintings are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they show the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women.

He was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists), and was thus omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today. Since that time, Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Jan Vermeer van Delft

1656 The Procuress

1656-57, A maid asleep

1658 View of Houses in Delft, known as "The Little Street"

1658, Soldier laughing girl

1658, The Milkmaid

1658-60, The glass of wine

1659, The girl with the wine glass

1660-61 Girl Interrupted at her Music

1660-61, View of Delft

1662, Young woman with a water pitcher

1662-65 The Music Lesson

1662-65, Young Woman with a Pearl Necklace

1664 Woman Holding a Balance

1664, The concert

1665-66 Girl with a Pearl Earring
A Vermeer Masterpiece, after the most recent restoration work in 1994, the subtle colors of the portrait have been brought to light. It is sometimes referred to as the “Mona Lisa” of the North.