Jan Vermeer

The Dutch painter Jan Vermeer (1632-1675) of Delft transformed traditional Dutch themes into images of superlative poise and serenity, rich with emblematic meaning.

Rarely has such a small body of work supported such a l!rge reputation as that of Jan (Johannes) Vermeer. Most experts would agree O. 35 authentic works, with a few more on which opinions differ. For the most part his paintings are of Mode 3t size, and their subject matter appears to be commonplace.

The documented facts about Vermeer's life are scanty. He was born in Delft. His father was an art dealer and silk weaver who also kept a tavern, and Vermeer probably took over the business after his father's death in 1655. In 1653 Vermeer married a well-to-do Catholic girl from Gouda; they had 11 children. In the year of his marriage he became a master in the Delft painters' guild, of which he was an officer in 1662-1663 and 1669-1670. He seems to have painted very little and to have sold only a fraction of his limited production, for the majority of his extant paintings were still in the hands of his family when he died. His dealings in works by other artists seem to have supported his family reasonably well until the French invasion of 1672 ruined his business. He died in 1675 and was buried on December 15. The following year his wife was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Nothing is known about Vermeer's education and training as a painter. In part because verses written following the death of Carel Fabritius in 1654 mention Vermeer as his successor as Delft's leading artist, it has been suggested that Fabritius was Vermeer's teacher. Certainly Fabritius anticipated Vermeer's interest in perspective experiments and his use of a light-flooded wall as a background for figures. But Fabritius lived in Delft only after 1650, by which time Vermeer would have been well on his way toward the completion of his training.

Sixteen of Vermeer's paintings are signed, but only two are dated: The Procuress (1656) and The Astronomer (1668). A chronology of his works, based on their stylistic relationships with these two landmarks and on other considerations, has found general acceptance, though some points continue to be argued.

Early Works

The warm colors and emphatic chiaroscuro of The Procuress relate it to paintings of the Rembrandt school of the 1650s, but its subject matter and composition reflect an acquaintance with paintings of the 1620s by the Utrecht Caravaggists. Considered to be earlier than The Procuress are two pictures that resemble it because of the color scheme, dominated by reds and yellows, and because they are larger in size and scale than Vermeer's later works. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is reminiscent of compositions by Hendrick Terbrugghen and Gerrit van Honthorst, who disseminated the Caravaggesque style in Holland. Diana and Her Companions, Vermeer's only mythological subject, is also redolent of Italy. It is his only painting of figures in a landscape setting.

After these three diverse experiments, which may have owed something to Vermeer's familiarity with works in his father's stock of art, he painted the Girl Asleep at a Table, in which he retained the warm palette of his other early pictures but in terms of subject matter and composition plunged into the mainstream of current Delft painting. The room with an open door, through which the adjoining brightly lighted room is visible and which is typical of Vermeer's Delft contemporary Pieter de Hooch, went back to early Netherlandish tradition. For Vermeer it was the first attempt to place a figure in the defined space of a room, a problem that preoccupied him throughout the rest of his career. The effect of sharp recession also was a prominent feature of Vermeer's compositional mode from then on. The quality of self absorption seen in this painting contributed to his most characteristic emotional effects. Subtle allusions to meanings beyond the obvious one, which have made this picture the subject of much discussion, were also found in Vermeer's later works.

All these tendencies were brought under full control for the first time in the Soldier and Laughing Girl. This painting also marked the transition between Vermeer's early and mature works in that pointillé (gleaming highlights of thick impasto), which brightens the paint surface, appeared for the first time.

Mature Period

Vermeer's two town views, the Little Street and View of Delft, have been called "the first plein-air pictures of modern painting." The View of Delft has been in the 20th century one of the most admired of all paintings. Marcel Proust's appreciation of it enhanced its charms for many observers.

Vermeer's style just before 1660 is also well represented by The Cook. The rich paint surface with its extraordinary tactile quality, the monumental figure perfectly balanced in space and engrossed in a humble task performed with the dignity due a solemn rite, and the intense color scheme dominated by yellow and blue all show Vermeer at the height of his powers. Before long his paintings tended to become more delicate and detached, with more diffused light and a smoother surface, as in the Lady Weighing Gold, which is an allegory of God's judgment of man.

Following these great works, which are assumed to have preceded and immediately followed 1660, come the "pearl pictures." The Concert of about 1662 and the Woman with a Water Jug of perhaps a year later display the dulcet charms of this period.

Late Works

More complicated compositions and especially more elaborate space representations mark the major works of the last decade of Vermeer's life. The Allegory of the Art of Painting (ca. 1670) is large and complex in both composition and meaning. On the whole it is untainted by the hardness and dryness that marred his later works, such as the Allegory of the Catholic Faith.

Characteristics of Vermeer's Art

Vermeer was criticized for exaggerating the perspective of his interior settings until eyes accustomed to reality as seen through the camera lens recognized that his perspective was in fact accurate. When the painter is very close to the nearest object in his composition, for example, only 2 feet from it, an object of equal size that is 4 feet from his eye will be depicted, correctly, as half the size of the first. Vermeer arranged his objects to achieve such contrasts. The effect of this practice is to make the voids in a sense tangible. The space is built up along with the objects in a construction of cubic solidity.

It has been suggested that Vermeer used a camera obscure in composing his pictures and that this accounts for both his striking compositions and his peculiarities in handling colors and values. Delft in his time was a center of optical experimentation and lens making, and it would not be surprising if artists there availed themselves of optical devices in their work. The unique qualities of Vermeer's paintings must, however, be attributed to his artistic personality, whether he did or did not make use of mirrors or lenses in attaining them.

The figures and objects Vermeer painted belong to their environment in a special way that heightens the impression that what he is depicting is a block of space with all that it contains rather than solids separated by voids. He renounced the contours that in most paintings distinguished between figures and their setting. Instead, the outlines of his objects are insubstantial; they unite the elements of his paintings rather than separate them.

Vermeer's manner of modeling, too, was exceptional. He built his figures with planes of contrasted values, omitting the graduations of tone that most painters use to model the form. In his mature works he punctuated his subtle patterns of light and shadow with pointillé.

The figures of Vermeer, fixed in their enveloping space as a fly is fixed in amber, deny any possibility of the disruption of their perfect poise. They exist in a realm of abstract beauty. The quietness, serenity, order, and immutability of the world of Vermeer's art provide, for those with a taste for such virtues, intimations of immortality. Perhaps that is why this painter, whose works appear to be as forthright and clear as the light of day, has always been felt to be mysterious.

Further Reading

A thorough study of Vermeer's life and work is Pieter T. A. Swillens, Johannes Vermeer: Painter of Delft (1949; trans. 1950). It is especially valuable for information about the historical background, including all relevant documents, and for technical analyses of the paintings and Vermeer's system of perspective. Lawrence Gowing, Vermeer (1953), is a sensitive examination of Vermeer's stylistic development and provides much comparative material that clarifies the place of his works in relation to contemporary painting. Ludwig Goldscheider, ed., Johannes Vermeer: The Paintings (1958; 2d ed. 1967), is noteworthy for its fine plates, including original-size details in color and in black and white. □

Vermeer, Jan (bapt. Delft, 31 Oct. 1632; bur. Delft, 16 Dec. 1675). Dutch painter. Among the great Dutch artists of the 17th century, he is now second in renown only to Rembrandt, but he made little mark during his lifetime and then long languished in obscurity. Almost all the contemporary references to him are in colourless official documents and his career is in many ways enigmatic. As far as is known, he lived all his life in his native Delft and rarely made even local journeys outside it. He became a member of the painters' guild there in 1653 and was twice elected ‘hooftman’ (headman), but it is not known who taught him. His name is often linked with that of Carel Fabritius, but it is doubtful if he can have been Vermeer's teacher in the formal sense. This distinction may belong to Leonaert Bramer, although there is no similarity between their work; Balthasar van der Ast, too, has been suggested as a candidate.

Only about 35 to 40 paintings by Vermeer are known, and although some early works may have been destroyed in the disastrous Delft gunpowder explosion of 1654, it is unlikely that the figure was ever much larger; this is because most of the Vermeers mentioned in early sources can be identified with surviving pictures, whilst only a few pictures now attributed to him are not mentioned in these sources—thus there are few loose ends. This small output may be at least partially explained by the fact that he almost certainly earned most of his living by means other than painting. His father kept an inn and was a picture dealer and Vermeer very likely inherited both businesses. In spite of this he had grave financial troubles (he had a large family to support—his wife bore him fifteen children, eleven of whom survived him). His money problems increased after the French invasion of 1672, which devastated the Dutch economy, and his widow was declared insolvent the year after his death.

Only three of Vermeer's paintings are dated—The Procuress (1656, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), The Astronomer (1668, Louvre, Paris), and its companion The Geographer (1669, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt). (Another signed and dated work, St Praxedis Mopping up the Blood of the Martyrs of 1655, appeared in the 1960s, but its authenticity has been questioned. It is in a private collection.) It is difficult to fit his other paintings into a convincing chronology, but his work nevertheless divides into three fairly clear phases. The first is represented by only two works—Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (NG, Edinburgh) and Diana and her Companions (Mauritshuis, The Hague)—both probably dating from a year or two before The Procuress. They are so different from Vermeer's other works—in their comparatively large scale, their subject matter, and their handling—that Diana and her Companions was for a time attributed to the obscure Jan Vermeer of Utrecht. The Procuress marks the transition to the middle phase of Vermeer's career, for although it is fairly large and warm in tonality—like the two history paintings—it is a contemporary life scene, as were virtually all Vermeer's pictures from now on.

In the central part of his career (into which most of his work falls) Vermeer painted those serene and harmonious images of domestic life that for their beauty of composition, brushwork, and treatment of light raise him into a different class from any other Dutch genre painter. The majority show one or two figures in a room lit from the onlooker's left, engaged in domestic or recreational tasks. The predominant colours are yellow, blue, and grey, arranged in flawlessly cool harmonies, and the compositions have a purity and dignity that confer on them an impact out of relation to their small size. In reproduction his pictures can look quite smooth and detailed, but Vermeer often applies the paint broadly, with variations in texture suggesting the play of light with exquisite vibrancy— Jan Veth aptly described his paint surface as looking like ‘crushed pearls melted together’. From this period of Vermeer's greatest achievement also date his only landscape—the incomparable View of Delft (Mauritshuis), in which he surpassed even the greatest of his specialist contemporaries in lucidity and truth of atmosphere—and his much-loved Little Street (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Another painting of this period is somewhat larger in size and unusual in subject for him—The Artist's Studio (KH Mus., Vienna), in which Vermeer shows a back view of a painter, perhaps a suitably enigmatic self-portrait.

In the third and final phase of his career Vermeer's work lost some of its magic as it became somewhat harder. There are still wonderful passages of paint in all his late works, but the utter naturalness of his finest works is gone. The only one of his paintings that might be considered a failure, the Allegory of Faith (Met. Mus., New York), belongs to this period. His wife was a Catholic and he may well have been converted to her religion, but this rather lumbering figure shows he was not at ease with the trappings of Baroque allegory. There are symbolic references in other paintings by him, but they all—except for this one—make sense on a straightforward naturalistic level.

No drawings by Vermeer are known and knowledge of his working methods has largely to be deduced from close examination of his paintings. It is virtually certain, however, that he sometimes made use of a camera obscura; the exaggerated perspective in some of his pictures (in which foreground figures or objects loom unexpectedly large) and the way in which sparkling highlights appear slightly out of focus are effects duplicated by unsophisticated lenses. The scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), celebrated for his work with microscopes, became the executor of Vermeer's estate and it may well have been an interest in optics that brought them together.

Vermeer's paintings were admired in his lifetime, but after his death his name quickly passed into obscurity. During the 18th century his pictures were sometimes attributed to other artists who were better known at the time, such as Frans van Mieris, and in 1833 the British picture dealer John Smith (1781–1855), a pioneer in the scholarly study of Dutch art, wrote of Vermeer: ‘This painter is so little known, by reason of the scarcity of his works, that it is quite inexplicable how he attained the excellence many of them exhibit.’ The key figure in rediscovering Vermeer was Théophile Thoré, who published a lengthy series of articles on him in the Gazette des beaux-arts in 1866 and memorably dubbed him ‘the Sphinx of Delft’.

Vermeer, Jan (1632–75). Dutch painter. Among the great Dutch artists of the 17th century, he is now second in renown only to Rembrandt, but he made little mark during his lifetime and then long languished in obscurity. Almost all of the contemporary references to him are in colourless official documents and his career is in many ways enigmatic. As far as is known, he lived all his life in his native Delft and rarely made even local journeys outside it. He became a member of the painters' guild there in 1653 and was twice elected hooftman (headman), but it is not known who taught him. His name is often linked with that of Carel Fabritius, but it is doubtful if he can have been Vermeer's teacher in the formal sense; this distinction may belong to Leonaert Bramer, although there is no similarity between their work. Only about 35 to 40 paintings by Vermeer are known, and although some early works may have been destroyed in the disastrous Delft gunpowder explosion of 1654, it is unlikely that the figure was ever much larger; this is because most of the Vermeers mentioned in early sources can be identified with surviving pictures, whilst only a few pictures now attributed to him are not mentioned in these sources—thus there are few loose ends. This small output may be at least partially explained by the fact that he almost certainly earned most of his living by means other than painting. His father kept an inn and was a picture-dealer and Vermeer very likely inherited both businesses. In spite of this he had grave financial troubles (he had a large family to support—his wife bore him fifteen children, eleven of whom survived him). His money problems increased after the French invasion of 1672, which devastated the Dutch economy, and his widow was declared insolvent the year after his death.

Only three of Vermeer's paintings are dated—The Procuress (1656, Gemäldegalerie, Dresden), The Astronomer (1668, Louvre, Paris), and its companion The Geographer (1669, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt). (Another signed and dated work, St Praxedis Mopping up the Blood of the Martyrs of 1655, appeared in the 1960s, but its authenticity has been questioned. It is in a private collection.) It is difficult to fit his other paintings into a convincing chronology, but his work nevertheless divides into three fairly clear phases. The first is represented by only two works—Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (NG, Edinburgh) and Diana and her Companions (Mauritshuis, The Hague)—both probably dating from a year or two before The Procuress. They are so different from Vermeer's other works—in their comparatively large scale, their subject matter, and their handling—that Diana and her Companions was long attributed to the obscure Jan Vermeer of Utrecht (c.1630–c.1692), in spite of a genuine signature. The Procuress marks the transition to the middle phase of Vermeer's career, for although it is fairly large and warm in tonality—like the two history paintings—it is a contemporary life scene, as were virtually all Vermeer's pictures from now on. In the central part of his career (into which most of his work falls) Vermeer painted those serene and harmonious images of domestic life that for their beauty of composition, brushwork, and treatment of light raise him into a different class from any other Dutch genre painter. The majority show one or two figures in a room lit from the onlooker's left, engaged in domestic or recreational tasks. The predominant colours are yellow, blue, and grey, arranged in flawlessly cool harmonies, and the compositions have a purity and dignity that confer on them an impact out of relation to their small size. In reproduction his pictures can look quite smooth and detailed, but Vermeer often applies the paint broadly, with variations in texture suggesting the play of light with exquisite vibrancy—the Dutch artist and critic Jan Veth (1864–1925) aptly described his paint surface as looking like ‘crushed pearls melted together’. From this period of Vermeer's greatest achievement also date his only landscape—the incomparable View of Delft (Mauritshuis), in which he surpassed even the greatest of his specialist contemporaries in lucidity and truth of atmosphere—and his much-loved Little Street (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Another painting of this period is somewhat larger in size and unusual in subject for him—The Artist's Studio (KH Mus., Vienna), in which Vermeer shows a back view of a painter, perhaps a suitably enigmatic self-portrait. In the third and final phase of his career Vermeer's work lost some of its magic as it became somewhat harder. There are still wonderful passages of paint in all his late works, but the utter naturalness of his finest works is gone. The only one of his paintings that might be considered a failure, the Allegory of Faith (Met. Mus., New York), belongs to this period. His wife was a Catholic and he may well have been converted to her religion, but this rather lumbering figure shows he was not at ease with the trappings of Baroque allegory. There are symbolic references in other paintings by him, but they all—except for this one—make sense on a straightforward naturalistic level.

No drawings by Vermeer are known and knowledge of his working methods has largely to be deduced from close examination of his paintings. It is virtually certain, however, that he sometimes made use of a camera obscura; the exaggerated perspective in some of his pictures (in which foreground figures or objects loom unexpectedly large) and the way in which sparkling highlights appear slightly out of focus are effects duplicated by unsophisticated lenses. The scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), celebrated for his work with microscopes, became the executor of Vermeer's estate and it may well have been an interest in optics that brought them together. Vermeer's paintings were admired in his lifetime, but after his death his name quickly passed into obscurity. During the 18th century his pictures were sometimes attributed to other artists who were better known at the time, such as Frans van Mieris, and in 1833 the British picture dealer John Smith (1781–1855), a pioneer in the scholarly study of Dutch art, wrote of Vermeer: ‘This painter is so little known, by reason of the scarcity of his works, that it is quite inexplicable how he attained the excellence many of them exhibit.’ The key figure in rediscovering Vermeer was Thoré, who published a series of articles on him in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in 1866 and memorably dubbed him ‘the Sphinx of Delft’.

Jan Vermeer

Born: October 30, 1632
Delft, Netherlands
Died: December 15, 1675
Delft, Netherlands
Dutch painter

The Dutch painter Jan Vermeer of Delft transformed traditional Dutch themes into images of fantastic poise and peace, rich with symbolic meaning.

Mysterious childhood

The documented facts about Jan Vermeer's life are few. He was born on October 30 or 31, 1632, in Delft, Netherlands, the second of two children to Digna Baltens and Reynier Jansz. His father was an art dealer and silk weaver who also kept a tavern, and Vermeer probably took over the business after his father's death in 1655. It is presumed that his father, who was actively involved with the local artists and collectors, was an early influence on the young child. Vermeer supposedly began his training as an artist around the mid-1640s.

In 1653 Vermeer married a well-to-do Catholic girl from Gouda; they had eleven children. In the year of his marriage he became a master in the Delft painters' guild (an association), of which he was an officer from 1662 to 1663, and again, from 1669 to 1670. He seems to have painted very little and to have sold only a fraction of his limited production, for the majority of his paintings were still in the hands of his family when he died. His dealings in works by other artists seem to have supported his family reasonably well until he was financially ruined following the French invasion of 1672, when France invaded the Spanish Netherlands. He died in 1675 and was buried on December 15. The following year his wife was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Nothing is known about where Vermeer was educated and trained as a painter. In part because verses written following the death of Carel Fabritius (1622–1654) in 1654 mention Vermeer as his successor as Delft's leading artist, it has been suggested that Fabritius was Vermeer's teacher. Certainly Fabritius helped develop Vermeer's interest in perspective experiments (experiments with depth) and his use of a light-flooded wall as a background for figures. But Fabritius lived in Delft only after 1650, by which time Vermeer would have been well on his way toward the completion of his training.

Early works

The warm colors of The Procuress relate it to paintings of the Rembrandt school (styled after the painter Rembrandt [1606–1669]) of the 1650s, but its subject matter and composition reflect influence by paintings of the 1620s by the Utrecht Caravaggists, a group of painters in Utrecht, Netherlands, who stressed a new, international style. Considered to be earlier than The Procuress are two pictures that resemble it because of the color scheme, dominated by reds and yellows, and because they are larger in size and scale than Vermeer's later works. Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is similar to compositions by Hendrick Terbrugghen (1588–1629) and Gerrit van Honthorst (1590–1656), who spread the Caravaggesque (having to do with the painting style of Italian painter Caravaggio [c. 1571–1610]) style in Holland. Diana and Her Companions, Vermeer's only mythological subject, is also suggestive of Italy. It is his only painting of figures in a landscape setting.

After these three diverse experiments, which may have owed something to Vermeer's familiarity with works in his father's stock of art, he painted the Girl Asleep at a Table, in which he used the warm range of colors of his other early pictures but in terms of subject matter and composition plunged into the mainstream of current Delft painting.

The Soldier and Laughing Girl, marked the shift between Vermeer's early and mature works in that pointillé (gleaming highlights of thick layers of paint, which brightens the surface) appeared for the first time.

Mature period

Vermeer's style just before 1660 is also well represented by The Cook. The rich paint surface with its extraordinary quality, the monumental figure perfectly balanced in space and involved in a humble task, and the intense colors dominated by yellow and blue all show Vermeer at the height of his powers.

Following these works, which are assumed to have immediately followed 1660, come the "pearl pictures." The Concert of about 1662 and the Woman with a Water Jug of perhaps a year later display the pleasing charms of this period.

More complicated compositions and especially larger space representations mark the major works of the last decade of Vermeer's life. The Allegory of the Art of Painting (c.1670) is large and complex in both composition and meaning. On the whole it is not influenced by the hardness and dryness that weakened his later works, such as the Allegory of the Catholic Faith.

The quietness, peacefulness, order, and unchanging world of Vermeer's art provide hints of immortality, or the idea that one cannot be affected by death. Perhaps that is why this painter, whose works appear to be as clear as the light of day, has always been thought to be mysterious.

For More Information

Gowing, Lawrence. Vermeer. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.

Larsen, Erik. Jan Vermeer. New York: Smithmark, 1998.

Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Jan Vermeer. New York: Abrams, 1981.

Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer & the Art of Painting. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.

Vermeer, Jan (1632–75) Dutch painter, one of the most celebrated of all 17th-century Dutch painters. Early mythological and religious works gave way to a middle period featuring the serene and contemplative domestic scenes for which he is best known. The compositions are extremely simple and powerful, and the colours are usually muted blues, greys, and yellows. He treated light and colour with enormous delicacy, as in the superb landscape, View of Delft (c.1660). Towards the end of his life, Vermeer began to paint in a heavier manner and his work lost some of its mysterious charm.

http://www.nga.gov; http://www.rijksmuseum.nl; http://www.mauritshuis.nl