Vermeer

• 1632 Johannes Vermeer born, Delft, Holland, of Reynier Vermeer, silk weaver and art dealer.
• 1641 The Vermeers moved into "Mechelen", an inn on the market square in Delft.
• 1653 Vermeer married Catherina Bolnes, daughter of Maria Thins.
• 1655 Vermeer's father Reynier died.
• 1657 An inventory lists a painting The Visit of the Holy Women to the Tomb of Christ valued at 20 guilders.
• 1662 Vermeer chosen as a member of the Board of the St. Lukes Guild, a trade association of artists.
• 1663 A French visitor, Balthasar de Monconys offered a Vermeer painting by a baker for 480 guilders.
• 1672 The Vermeers moved to Maria Thins' house on the Oude Langendijk.
• 1675 Vermeer died.
• 1676 Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), the microscopist, named trustee for the Vermeer estate.
• 1676 Inventory of the estate: 19 paintings bequeathed to Catherina Bolnes and Maria Thins.
• 1676 Catherina Bolnes pays a debt of 617 guilders to a baker with two paintings.
• 1680 Maria Thins died.

Saint Praxedis 1655
Oil on Canvas 40 x 32 inch
Private Collection

 
Allegory of Faith 1671 - 74
Oil on Canvas 45 x 35 inch
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

   
The Art o f Painting 1666 - 67 (large)
Oil on Canvas 47 x 39 inch
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The Astronomer 1668
Oil on Canvas 20 x 18 inch
The Louvre, Paris

 
Christ in the House of Mary and Martha 1655
Oil on Canvas 63 x 56 inch
National Gallery, Scotland

 
The Concert 1665 - 66 (large)
Oil on Canvas 28 x 25 inch
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

 
View of Delft 1660 - 61 (large)
Oil on Canvas 39 x 46 inch
Mauritshuis, The Hague

 
Diana and Her Companions 1655-56
Oil on Canvas 39 x 41 inch
Mauritshuis, the Hague

 
The Geographer 1668 - 69
Oil on Canvas 21 x 18 inch
Stadelsches Kunstinstitut, Germany

   
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window 1657
Oil on Canvas 33 x 25 inch
Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Dresden

 
Girl Interrupted at her Music 1660 - 61
Oil on Canvas 15 x 17 inch
Frick Collection, New York

Girl with a Red Hat 1665 - 66 (large)
Oil on Panel 9 x 7 inch
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 
The Girl with the Wineglass 1659 - 60
Oil on Canvas 31 x 26 inch
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum

 
The glass of Wine 1658 - 60
Oil on Canvas 26 x 30 inch
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

 
The Guitar Player 1670 (large)
Oil on Canvas 21 x 18 inch
Trustees of the Iveagh Gequest, London

   
The Lacemaker 1669 - 70
Oil on Canvas 10 x 8 inch
The Louvre, Paris

A Lady Seated at the Virginal 1675
Oil on Canvas 20 x 18 inch
National Gallery, London

 
 A Lady Standing at the Virginal 1672 - 73
Oil on Canvas 20 x 18 inch
National Gallery, London

 
Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid 1670 (large)
Oil on Canvas 28 x 23 inch
National Gallery of Ireland

The Little Street 1657 - 58 (large)
Oil on Canvas 21 x 17 inch
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

   
The Love Letter 1669 - 70 (large)
Oil on Canvas 17 x 15 inch
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 
The Milkmaid 1658 - 60 (large)
Oil on Canvas 18 x 16 inch
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 
Mistress and Maid 1667 - 68 (large)
Oil on Canvas 35 x 31 inch
Frick Collection, New York

The Music Lesson 1662 - 64 (large)
Oil on Canvas 29 x 25 inch
The Royal Collection

   
Officer and laughing Girl 1658 - 60 (large)
Oil on Canvas 20 x 18 inch
Frick Collection, New York

Girl with a Pearl Earring 1665 - 66 (large)
Oil on Canvas 18 x 16 inch
Mauritshuis, The Hague

   
The procuress 1656 (large)
Oil on Canvas 56 x 51 inch
Staatliche Kunstammlungen, Dresden

 
Young Woman with a Water Pitcher 1664 - 65 (large)
Oil on Canvas 18 x 16 inch
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A woman Asleep 1657 (large)
Oil on Canvas 34 x 30 inch
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 
Woman Holding a Balance 1664 (large)
Oil on Canvas 17 x 15 inch
National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

 
Woman in Blue Reading a Letter 1663 - 64
Oil on Canvas 18 x 15 inch
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

 
Woman with a Pearl Necklace 1664 - 65
Oil on Canvas 22 x 18 inch
Staatliche Museen zu Belin

 
Woman with a Lute 1664
Oil on Canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 
Portrait of a Young Woman 1667 - 68
Oil on Canvas 17 x 15 inch
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Most of Vermeer's paintings portray figures in interiors. All his works are admired for the sensitivity with which he rendered effects of light and color and for the poetic quality of his images.

Little is known for certain about Vermeer's career. His teacher may have been Leonaert Bramer, a Delft artist who was a witness at Vermeer's marriage in 1653. His earliest signed and dated painting, The Procuress (1656), is thematically related to a Dirck van Baburen painting that Vermeer owned and that appears in the background of two of his own paintings. Another possible influence was that of Hendrick Terbrugghen, whose style anticipated the light color tonalities of Vermeer's later works.

During the late 1650s, Vermeer, along with his colleague Pieter de Hooch, began to place a new emphasis on depicting figures within carefully composed interior spaces. Other Dutch painters, including Gerard Ter Borch and Gabriel Metsu, painted similar scenes, but they were less concerned with the articulation of the space than with the description of the figures and their actions. In early paintings such as The Milkmaid (c.1658), Vermeer struck a delicate balance between the compositional and figural elements, and he achieved highly sensuous surface effects by applying paint thickly and modeling his forms with firm strokes. Later he turned to thinner combinations of glazes to obtain the subtler and more transparent surfaces displayed in paintings such as Woman with a Water Jug (c.1664/5).

A keen sensitivity to the effects of light and color and an interest in defining precise spatial relationships probably encouraged Vermeer to experiment with the camera obscura, an optical device that could project the image of sunlit objects placed before it with extraordinary realism. Although he may have sought to depict the camera's effects in his View of Delft (c.1660), it is unlikely that Vermeer would have traced such an image, as some commentators have charged. Moralizing references occur in several of Vermeer's works, although they tend to be obscured by the paintings' vibrant realism and their general lack of narrative elements. In his Love Letter (c.1670), a late painting in which the spatial environment becomes more complex and the figures appear more doll-like than in his earlier works, he includes on the back wall a painting of a boat at sea. Because this image was based on a contemporary emblem warning of the perils of love, it was clearly intended to add significance to the figures in the room.

After his death Vermeer was overlooked by all but the most discriminating collectors and art historians for more than 200 years. Only after 1866, when the French critic W. Thore-Burger "rediscovered" him, did Vermeer's works become widely known.