Johannes Vermeer
(1632 - 1675) |
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Allegories, Genre Narratives, Portraiture Art Work
| Name: |
Johannes Vermeer |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Delft, Netherlands |
| Nationality: |
Dutch |
| Birth: |
1632 |
| Death: |
1675 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Allegories, Genre Narratives, Portraiture |
| Medium: |
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| Method: |
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| Style: |
Baroque |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
| Vermeer was to genre painting what Rembrandt was to history painting and Ruisdael to landscape. Each transcended the limitations of his subject to create paintings that are now ranked as among the greatest works of art in human history. Thus, it is surprising to learn (hat despite his genius, Vermeer slipped into obscurity after his death and was forgotten until the nineteenth century. Like the Renaissance master Piero del la Franceses (who shared a similar fate), Vermeer understood the eloquence of silence in his images as well as the beauty of elemental geometry. A master at finding essences, Vermeer distilled time less ness out of that most momentary subject, ordinary life, and discovered the universal poetry in prosaic human existence. Now the most celebrated member of the so-called Delft school of painters, Vermeer is also one of the most elusive. Few facts give us clues into his life. Baptized in Delft in 1632, he was the son of a silkweaver and sometime art dealer. He remained in Delft, marrying there in 1653. Leonard Bramer* evidently spoke to his future mother-in-law on Jan's behalf. Jan joined the painters' guild some months after his marriage. He became a hoofdman (leader) of the guild from 1662 to 1663 and again from 1670 to 1671. Some time around 1672 he also became a dealer in pictures. That year Venneer met Gerard Ter Borch, and the two signed an affidavit as witnesses. Scholars still puzzle over Vermeer's training and evolution. Connections have been made with Carel Fabritius, who was killed in the Delft explosion of 1654. Certainly Fabritius was still alive when Vermeer's training would have taken place. Others suggest contact with the Utrecht painters, notably Hendrick Ter Brugghen, whose large-scale religious subjects may have inspired the young Vermeer. An Utrecht connection is further strengthened by the presence of Dirck van Baburen's Procuress (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts) in the background of at least two of Vermeer's paintings: Young Woman at the Virginal (London, National Gallery) and The Concert (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Art). Active for about twenty-two years, Venneer evidently worked slowly. In 1696 twenty-one of his paintings were auctioned, a sale that contained most of the paintings we still know today. His accepted surviving oeuvre now numbers about thirty-four paintings, of which few are dated: his Procuress of 1656 (Dresden, Staatliche Gemaidegalerie Aite Meister); his Astronomer (Paris, Baroness Edouard de Rothschild), dated 1668; and his Geographer (Frankfurt am Main, Stadelsches Kunstinstitut und Stadtische Galerie), dated (albeit in a later hand) 1669. Vermeer's development has been roughed out using these pictures as guideposts. Two narratives, Diana and Her Companions (The Hague, Mauritshuis) and Christ in the House of Mary and Martha (Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland), have been dated to the years proceeding his 1656 Procuress. Showing his response to Utrecht painters, these pictures also show Vermeer experimenting with figure types, modeling, lighting, and artistic sources. The above mentioned mythological painting comes closer to Bloemaert, and the biblical scene is nearer to Ter Brugghen, but both utilize generic figures and a frieze-like construction of space. In his Procuress (dated 1656), Vermeer's interest has shifted to the Amsterdam painter Nicolaes Maes (who himself responded earlier to the Delft school). The Procuress and the Young Woman Asleep (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art) mark profound changes in Vermeer's figure types, coloration, and spatial construction. Ordinary individuals engaged in ordinary actions become his subject, and his space is constructed to make the viewer feel as though the rug-covered tables provide access to and barriers against the onlooker. Despite its connections to Maes, Vermeer's Young Woman Asleep shows him maturing. His much-admired devices of a Hght-ftooded wall and a carefully constructed interior are in evidence. Around this time (just before 1660, most likely) Venneer also experimented with exterior scenes. His two famous town views, Little Street in Delft (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) and View of Delft (The Hague, Mauritshuis), are thought to date from this phase in his career. Vermeer may have used the camera obscura to capture the effects of light (conveyed as thick impastoed dots of highlights in his paintings), a practice he continued to employ in other paintings. Preferring interiors, during the 1660s Vermeer painted memorable versions of a favorite theme: a woman, alone within a window-lit interior, dreaming, pensive, or otherwise quietly engrossed. His Maidservant Pouring Milk (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum) is generally placed to the early 1660s on the basis of its similarity to ihe work of Card Fabritius, its impastoed highlights, and its obvious relationship to his earlier pictures. However, his Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum), with its more diffuse lighting, economical sense of form, and succinct description of the room, is considered to be a much later work. Besides his portrayals of solitary women, Vermeer also experimented with scenes of flirtation, courtship, or related subjects, invariably making the woman the focus and the man an ancillary figure who provokes reaction from the leading character. Occasionally showing a spontaneous expression (as in his Soldier and Laughing Girl, New York, Frick Collection -which one suspects comes earlier in his career - Vermeer more often subdued the emotion in his pictures, showing his characters quietly absorbed in their actions. Music lessons were his preferred theme: The Concert (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Art) is perhaps his most complex version of the subject. These images are expansions of his portrayals of women and instruments. The exact succession of many of his paintings is still debated, with paintings such as The Lacemaker (Paris, Louvre) variously dated to the 1660s or early 1670s. Regardless of their chronology, they reflect Vermeer's fundamental interest in reconciling opposites: the specifics of a room become nearly elemental and a moment in time is both expressed and suspended while concrete actions as well as emotions become brilliantly generalized. Sometimes enlarging his space - as in A Lady and Gentleman at the Virginals (London, Buckingham Palace) - and at other times reducing his focus down to a corner of a room where only parts of a table and a figure can be seen-as in his Lacemaker (Paris, Louvre) - Vermeer, in his greatest achievements, created pensive moments in which the viewer is transformed from voyeur to empathetic dreamer. Not surprisingly, many of his images allude to other senses, hint at moods, suggest dilemmas, or imply intimate relationships that lesser painters made more specific and therefore more prosaic. Unmatched at finding the ambiguity within straightforward situations, Vermeer was less successful at explicit allegory. Among his last pictures was the Allegory of the New Testament (also known as The Allegory of Catholic Faith), now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In this meticulously rendered picture, the realm remains steadfastly worldly despite its allusions to spiritual concerns. The work has also been used as evidence of Vermeer's possible conversion to Catholicism. Despite the obscurity into which he fell, Vermeer was sufficiently recognized in his lifetime to be praised by the contemporary poet Arnold Bon, who in 1667 called him the phoenix rising from the ashes of the fire that consumed Carel Fabritius. Moreover, noted collectors visited him, including the French nobleman Balthasar de Monconys, who in 1663 was disappointed to find no pictures available in Vermeer's studio and managed to see only one painting owned by a local baker. The apparent paucity of Vermeer's paintings has led scholars to conclude that he worked painfully slowly and that relatively few pictures have actually been lost. Vermeer's limited production, together with his losses as a picture dealer, may explain why, upon his death in 1675, Vermeer's widow declared insolvency. She stated in her writ that Vermeer had earned little at the end of his life and had difficulty supporting her and their many children, eight of whom were still underage when he died. The trustee for Vermeer's estate was his friend Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the famed scientist and father of microbiology. |
Samples of Work
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