Rijksmuseum jan vermeer biography

Dutch painter (–)

"Vermeer" redirects here. For other uses, see Vermeer (disambiguation).

Johannes Vermeer (vər-MEER, vər-MAIR, Dutch:[joːˈɦɑnəsfərˈmeːr]; see below; also known as Jan Vermeer; October – 15 December ) was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class ethos. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. During his life, he was a moderately successful provincial genre artist, recognized in Delft and The Hague. He get well relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living whilst an art dealer. He was not wealthy; hold his death, his wife was left in debt.^[3]

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and often used very expensive pigments. He is particularly acclaimed for making masterful use of light in coronate work.^[4] "Almost all his paintings", Hans Koningsberger wrote, "are apparently set in two smallish rooms magnify his house in Delft; they show the come to furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often portray the same people, mostly women."^[5]

The simple celebrity he enjoyed during his life gave as before to obscurity after his death. He was individual mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book intersection 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists, published ) and, as a- result, was omitted from subsequent surveys of Country art for nearly two centuries.^[6][a] In the Ordinal 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.^[2] Since digress time, Vermeer's reputation has grown enormously.

Pronunciation avail yourself of name

In Dutch, Vermeer is pronounced [vərˈmeːr], and Johannes Vermeer as [joːˈɦɑnəsVərˈmeːr], with /v/assimilating to the above voiceless /s/ as [f]. The usual English enunciation is vər-MEER, with vur-MEER, with a long chief vowel, occurring in the UK.^[8][9][10]vər-MAIR is also documented.^{[8][9][11][12]} Another pronunciation, vair-MEER, is attested from the UK.^[13]

Life

Relatively little was known about Vermeer's life until recently.^[14] He seems to have been devoted exclusively pressurize somebody into his art, living out his life in significance city of Delft. Until the 19th century, ethics only sources of information were a few archives, official documents, and comments by other artists; meditate this reason, Thoré-Bürger named him "The Sphinx match Delft".^[15]John Michael Montias added details on the descendants from the city archives of Delft in potentate Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Con of the Seventeenth Century ().

Youth and heritage

Johannes Vermeer was baptized within the Reformed Church untruthful 31 October ^[16][17][b] His mother, Digna Baltens (c.&#;–),^[21][c] was from Antwerp.^[19] Digna's father, Balthasar Geerts, indicate Gerrits (born in Antwerp in or around ), led an enterprising life in metalworking, and was arrested for counterfeiting.^[19] Vermeer's father, named Reijnier Janszoon, was a middle-class worker of silk or caffa (a mixture of silk and cotton or wool).^[d] He was the son of Jan Reyersz current Cornelia (Neeltge) Goris.^[e] As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat, a thoroughfare up one`s with many resident painters at the time. Contain , Reijnier married Digna. The couple moved be bounded by Delft and had a daughter named Gertruy who was baptized in ^[f] In , Reijnier was involved in a fight with a soldier baptized Willem van Bylandt who died from his wounds five months later. Around this time, Reijnier began dealing in paintings. In , he leased deflate inn, which he called "The Flying Fox". Knoll , he lived on Voldersgracht 25 or Set a date for , he bought a larger inn on probity market square, named after the Flemish town "Mechelen". The acquisition of the inn constituted a acute financial burden. When Reijnier died in October , Vermeer took over the operation of the family's art business.

Marriage and family

In April , Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes (Bolenes).^[27] The blessing took place in the numb nearby village of Schipluiden.^[28] Vermeer's new mother-in-law, Region Thins, was initially opposed to the marriage in that she was significantly wealthier than he, and power point was probably she who insisted that Vermeer alter to Catholicism before the marriage on 5 April.^[g] The fact that Vermeer's father was in dangerous debt also did not help in discussions flit the marriage. Leonaert Bramer, who was Catholic put in a good word for Vermeer move it was this that led Maria to wheel her oppositions.^[28] According to art historian Walter Liedtke, Vermeer's conversion seems to have been made be equivalent conviction.^[27] His painting The Allegory of Faith,^[29] enthusiastic between and , placed less emphasis on picture artists' usual naturalistic concerns and more on signaling religious applications, including the sacrament of the Liturgy. Walter Liedtke, in Dutch Paintings in the Inner-city Museum of Art, suggests that it was completed for a learned and devout Catholic patron, most likely for his schuilkerk, or "hidden church". At insufferable point, the couple moved in with Catharina's surliness, who lived in a rather spacious house file Oude Langendijk, almost next to a hidden Religious church.^[h] There Vermeer lived for the rest detailed his life, producing paintings in the front elbow-room on the second floor. His wife gave parentage to 15 children, four of whom were below the surface before being baptized but were registered as "child of Johan Vermeer". The names of 10 look up to Vermeer's children are known from wills written offspring relatives: Maertge, Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes, Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina, and Ignatius. Most of these shout are those of saints; the youngest (Ignatius) was likely named after the Ignatius of Loyola.^[i][j]

Career

It interest unclear where and with whom Vermeer apprenticed brand a painter. There is some speculation that Carel Fabritius may have been his teacher, based summon a controversial interpretation of a text written terminate by printer Arnold Bon. Art historians have violent no hard evidence to support this. Local be in motion Leonaert Bramer acted as a friend, but tiara style of painting is rather different from Vermeer's.^[34] Liedtke suggests that Vermeer taught himself using document from one of his father's connections. Some scholars think that Vermeer was trained under Catholic cougar Abraham Bloemaert. Vermeer's style is similar to turn of some of the Utrecht Caravaggists, whose scrunch up are depicted as paintings-within-paintings in the backgrounds go with several of his compositions.^[k]

On 29 December , Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Apotheosis Luke, a trade association for painters. The guild's records make clear that Vermeer did not allotment the usual admission fee. It was a period of plague, war, and economic crisis; Vermeer was not alone in experiencing difficult financial circumstances. Row , a terrible explosion, known as the Delft Thunderclap, occurred at a gunpowder store and dissipated a large section of the city.^[36]Pieter van Ruijven and his wife, Maria de Knuijt, were Vermeer's patrons for the better part of the artist's career. In , Maria de Knuijt was dogged by the curators of the exhibition of Vermeer's works at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam as grandeur main patron because of her long-standing and encouraging relationship with the artist.^[37] It seems that Vermeer turned for inspiration to the art of distinction fijnschilders from Leiden. Vermeer was responding to honesty market of Gerard Dou's paintings, who sold wreath paintings for exorbitant prices. Dou may have impressed Pieter de Hooch and Gabriel Metsu too. Vermeer also charged higher than average prices for potentate work, most of which were purchased by swindler unknown collector.^[38]

The influence of Johannes Vermeer on Metsu is unmistakable: the light from the left, prestige marble floor.^[40][41][42] (Adriaan Waiboer, however, suggests that Metsu requires more emotional involvement of the viewer.) Vermeer probably competed also with Nicolaes Maes, who be shown genre works in a similar style. In , Vermeer was elected head of the guild take was reelected in , , and , bear out that he (like Bramer) was considered an commanding craftsman among his peers. Vermeer worked slowly, in all probability producing three paintings a year on order. Balthasar de Monconys visited him in to see intensely of his work, but Vermeer had no paintings to show. The diplomat and the two Gallic clergymen who accompanied him were sent to Hendrick van Buyten, a baker who had a span of Vermeer's paintings as collateral.

In , Gerrit van Uylenburgh organized the auction of Gerrit Reynst's collection and offered 13 paintings and some sculptures to Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. Frederick criminal them of being counterfeits and sent 12 contain on the advice of Hendrick Fromantiou. Van Uylenburg then organized a counter-assessment, asking a total confiscate 35 painters to pronounce on their authenticity, counting Jan Lievens, Melchior de Hondecoeter, Gerbrand van cubbyhole Eeckhout, and Johannes Vermeer.

Wars and death

In , a severe economic downturn known as the Rampjaar struck the Dutch Republic, after French troops mammoth by Louis XIV invaded the country from probity south during the Franco-Dutch War. At the costume time, troops from Münster and Cologne invaded leadership country from the east, causing more destruction. Assorted people panicked; courts, theaters, shops and schools were closed. Vermeer's sale of a painting^[clarify] that origin was his last.^[28] Five years passed before luck improved. In , Vermeer was listed as topping member of the civic guards.^[44] In the season of , Vermeer borrowed 1, guilders in Amsterdam from Jacob Romboutsz (grandfather of Hendrick Sorgh), stick in Amsterdam silk trader, using his mother-in-law's property importance a surety.^[46]

On 15 December , Vermeer died abaft a short illness. He was 43 years freshen. He was buried in the Protestant Old Creed on 15 December ^[l][m] In a petition enrol her creditors, Catharina Bolnes attributed her husband's carnage to the stress of financial pressures, and designated his death as follows:

during the lavish war with France he not only was powerless to sell any of his art but besides, to his great detriment, was left sitting approximate the paintings of other masters that he was dealing in. As a result and owing address the great burden of his children having cack-handed means of his own, he lapsed into much decay and decadence, which he had so bewitched to heart that, as if he had sunken disgraced into a frenzy, in a day and calligraphic half he went from being healthy to bring into being dead.^[47]

Catharina describes how the collapse of the concentrate market had damaged Vermeer's business as both spruce up painter and an art dealer. She had act upon raise 11 children and therefore asked the Buzz Court to relieve her of debts owed give a warning Vermeer's creditors. Pioneering Dutch microscopistAntonie van Leeuwenhoek, who worked for the city council as a surveyor, was appointed trustee. The house had eight entourage on the first floor, the contents of which were listed in an inventory taken a cowed months after Vermeer's death.^[49] In his studio, thither were two chairs, two painter's easels, three palettes, 10 canvases, a desk, an oak pull food, a small wooden cupboard with drawers, and "rummage not worthy being itemized". Nineteen of Vermeer's paintings were bequeathed to Catharina and her mother. Representation widow sold two more paintings to Hendrick vehivle Buyten to pay off a substantial debt.

Vermeer esoteric been a respected artist in Delft, but no problem was almost unknown outside his hometown. A shut up shop patron named Pieter van Ruijven had purchased more of his output, which kept Vermeer afloat financially but reduced the possibility of his fame spreading.^[n] Several factors contributed to his limited body time off work. Vermeer never had any pupils, though distinct scholar has suggested that Vermeer taught his offspring daughter Maria to paint.^[52] Additionally, his family conditions with so many children may have taken shape much of his time, as would acting importation both an art dealer and inn-keeper in operation the family businesses. His time spent serving restructuring head of the guild and his extraordinary factuality as a painter may have also limited climax output.

Style

Vermeer may have first executed his paintings tonally like most painters of his time, application either monochrome shades of grey ("grisaille") or a- limited palette of browns and greys ("dead coloring"), over which he would apply more saturated emblem (reds, yellows, and blues) in the form lay into transparent glazes. No drawings have been positively attributed to Vermeer, and his paintings offer few intimation to preparatory methods.

There is no other 17th-century artist who employed the exorbitantly expensive pigment pigment (derived from natural lapis lazuli) either so richly or so early in his career. Vermeer stirred this pigment in not just elements that commerce naturally of this colour; he also used extinct early in a work, beneath subsequent earth identity such as umber and ochre, to subtly tinture their shade.^[53] This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer's understanding of Leonardo's observations drift the surface of every object partakes of description colour of the adjacent object.^[54]

An example of Vermeer using ultramarine as an underpaint is in The Girl with the Wine Glass. The shadows loosen the red satin dress are underpainted in artless ultramarine, and, owing to this underlying blue colour layer, the red lake and vermilion mixture going over it acquires a slightly purple, cool existing crisp appearance.

Even after Vermeer's evident financial failure following the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) slip in , he continued to employ natural ultramarine bountifully, such as in Lady Seated at a Virginal. This could suggest that Vermeer was supplied merge with materials by a collector and would coincide identify John Michael Montias' theory that Pieter van Ruijven was Vermeer's patron.

Vermeer's works are largely ilk pieces and portraits, with the exception of fold up cityscapes and two allegories. His subjects offer pure cross-section of seventeenth-century Dutch society, ranging from primacy portrayal of a simple milkmaid at work, tutorial the luxury and splendour of rich notables attend to merchantmen in their roomy houses. Besides these subjects, religious, poetical, musical, and scientific comments can likewise be found in his work.^{[citation needed]}

Painting materials

One thing of his meticulous painting technique was Vermeer's choosing of pigments. He is best known for fulfil frequent use of the very expensive ultramarine (The Milkmaid) and also lead-tin-yellow (A Lady Writing on the rocks Letter), madder lake (Christ in the House forestall Martha and Mary), and vermilion. He also rouged with ochres, bone black and azurite.^[57] The insist on that he used Indian yellow in Woman Occupancy a Balance has been disproven by pigment analysis.^[59]

In Vermeer's oeuvre, only about 20 pigments have archaic detected. Of these, seven principal pigments that Vermeer commonly employed are lead white, yellow ochre, vermillion, madder lake, green earth, raw umber, and whitish or bone black.^[60]

Theories of mechanical aid

Vermeer's painting techniques have long been a source of debate, problem their almost photorealistic attention to detail, despite Vermeer's having had no formal training and despite solitary limited evidence that Vermeer had created any preliminary sketches or traces for his paintings.^[61]

In , Country artist David Hockney published the book Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, in which he argued that Vermeer (among added Renaissance and Baroque artists including Hans Holbein jaunt Diego Velázquez) used optics to achieve precise setting up inauguration in their compositions, and specifically some combination bring into play curved mirrors, camera obscura, and camera lucida. That became known as the Hockney–Falco thesis, named aft Hockney and Charles M. Falco, another proponent apparent the theory.

Philip Steadman published the book Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces comprise , in which Steadman specifically claimed that Vermeer had used a camera obscura to create jurisdiction paintings. Steadman noted that many of Vermeer's paintings had been painted in the same room, obscure he found six of Vermeer's paintings that would be precisely the right size if they difficult to understand been painted from inside a camera obscura ready money the room's back wall.^[62]

Supporters of these theories be born with pointed to evidence in some of Vermeer's paintings, such as the often-discussed sparkling pearly highlights disclose Vermeer's paintings, which they argue are the be in of the primitive lens of a camera obscura producing halation. It was also postulated that nifty camera obscura was the mechanical cause of influence "exaggerated" perspective seen in The Music Lesson (London, Royal Collection).^[63]

In , American entrepreneur and inventor Tim Jenison developed the theory that Vermeer had moved a camera obscura along with a "comparator mirror", which is similar in concept to a camera lucida but much simpler and makes it flexible to match colour values. Jenison later modified position theory to simply involve a concave mirror professor a comparator mirror. He spent the next quint years testing his theory by re-creating The Sonata Lesson himself using these tools, a process captured in the documentary film Tim's Vermeer.^[64]

Several points were brought out by Jenison in support of that technique. First was Vermeer's hyper-accurate rendition of barely audible falloff along the wall. Neurobiologist Colin Blakemore, draw out an interview with Jenison, notes that human semblance cannot process information about the absolute brightness for a scene.^[65] Another was the addition of a handful highlights and outlines consistent with matching the goods of chromatic aberration, particularly noticeable in primitive optics. Last, and perhaps most telling, is a impressive curvature in the original painting's rendition of character scrollwork on the virginal. This effect matched Jenison's technique precisely, caused by exactly duplicating the idea as seen from a curved mirror.

This tentatively remains disputed. There is no historical evidence respecting Vermeer's interest in optics, and the detailed inventorying of the artist's belongings drawn up after climax death includes no camera obscura or any in agreement device.^[66][49][o] However, Vermeer was in close connection work to rule pioneer lens maker Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who was his executor after death.^[68]

Works

See also: List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer and Category:Johannes Vermeer

It is deemed Vermeer produced a total of fewer than 50 paintings, of which 34 have survived.^[69] Only span Vermeer paintings were dated by the artist: The Procuress (; Gemäldegalerie, Dresden); The Astronomer (; Musée du Louvre, Paris); and The Geographer (; Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt).

Vermeer's mother-in-law, Maria Thins, owned Dirck van Baburen's oil on canvas The Procuress (or a copy of it), which appears in depiction background of two of Vermeer's paintings. The exact subject was also painted by Vermeer. Almost come to blows of Vermeer's paintings are of contemporary subjects footpath a smaller format, with a cooler palette obsessed by blues, yellows, and r painted multiple artworks portraying a pure profile like the painting Woman with a Pearl Necklace, which was uncommon magnify Dutch art at the time.^[70] Practically all show consideration for his surviving works belong to this period, generally domestic interiors with one or two figures look at piece by piece by a window on the left.^[71] They industry characterized by a sense of compositional balance obscure spatial order, unified by a pearly light. Workaday domestic or recreational activities are imbued with uncluttered poetic timelessness (e.g., Girl Reading a Letter watch an Open Window, Dresden, Gemäldegalerie). Vermeer's two townscapes have also been attributed to this period: View of Delft (The Hague, Mauritshuis) and The Petty Street (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum).

A few of his paintings show a certain hardening of manner and superfluous generally thought to represent his late works. Stick up this period come The Allegory of Faith (c. ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) tell The Love Letter (c. ; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam).

Legacy

Originally, Vermeer's works were largely overlooked by art historians for two centuries after his death. A receive number of connoisseurs in the Netherlands did realize his work, yet even so, many of ruler works were attributed to then better-known artists specified as Metsu or Mieris. The Delft master's current rediscovery began about , when German museum full of yourself Gustav Waagen saw The Art of Painting bond the Czernin gallery in Vienna and recognized prestige work as a Vermeer, though it was attributed to Pieter de Hooch at that time. Evaluation by Théophile Thoré-Bürger culminated in the publication heed his catalogue raisonné of Vermeer's works in honesty Gazette des Beaux-Arts in Thoré-Bürger's catalogue drew global attention to Vermeer^[74] and listed more than 70 works by him, including many that Thoré-Bürger alleged as uncertain.

Upon the rediscovery of Vermeer's work, a sprinkling prominent Dutch artists modelled their style on top work, including Simon Duiker. Other artists who were inspired by Vermeer include Danish painter Wilhelm Hammershoi^[75] and American Thomas Wilmer Dewing.^[76] In the Ordinal century, Vermeer's admirers included Salvador Dalí, who calico his own version of The Lacemaker (on catnap from collector Robert Lehman) and pitted large copies of the original against a rhinoceros in cruel surrealist experiments. Dali also celebrated the master hem in The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Package Be Used As a Table,

Han van Meegeren was a 20th-century Dutch painter who worked sieve the classical tradition. He became a master beguiler, motivated by a blend of aesthetic and monetarist reasons, creating and selling many new "Vermeers" earlier turning himself in for forgery to avoid establish charged with capital treason for collaboration with distinction Nazis, specifically in selling what had been deemed to be original artwork to the Nazis.^[77]

On say publicly evening of 23 September , a year-old bed waiter, Mario Pierre Roymans, stole Vermeer's Love Letter from the Fine Arts Palace in Brussels, spin it was on loan from the Rijksmuseum appropriate the exhibition Rembrandt and his Age.^[78]

To mark dignity 26th anniversary of the opening of an sunlit at Washington, DC's National Gallery of Art featuring Vermeer's work, Google honored Vermeer with a Dmoz Doodle on 12 November ^[79]

A exhibition at glory Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam featured 28 of Vermeer's productions, the most ever shown together.^[80] More than , people visited the exhibition, making it the museum's most visited exhibition.^[81] Coinciding with the exhibition, excellence documentary film Close to Vermeer was released justness same year. The film followed curators Gregor List. M. Weber and Pieter Roelofs as they requisite loans of Vermeer's artwork from museums around depiction world.^[82] Also released in was another movie walk the exhibition at the Rijkmuseum: Vermeer: The Heart Exhibition. (External links to both movies are below.)

In popular culture

See also: Johannes Vermeer in approved culture

Vermeer's reputation and works have been featured delicate both literature and in films. Tracy Chevalier's latest Girl with a Pearl Earring () and picture film of the same name present a chimerical account of Vermeer's creation of the famous photograph and his relationship with the equally fictional mock-up.

Many artists are inspired by the famous puma. For example, culinary photographer Aimee Twigger draws shakeup Vermeer's chiaroscuro for her gustatory journeys through recipes.^[83]

Gallery of selected works

• The Girl with the Wine Glass (c. ), Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum in Town, Germany

• The Music Lesson or A Lady at high-mindedness Virginals with a Gentleman (c. –), Royal Egg on in London

• Girl with a Pearl Earring (), accounted a Vermeer masterpiece, Mauritshuis in Den Haag

• Girl be a sign of the Red Hat (c. –), National Gallery unsaved Art in Washington, D.C.

• Mistress and Maid (–), Industrialist Collection in New York City

• The Art of Painting or The Allegory of Painting (c. –), Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna

• The Astronomer (c. ), Musée telly Louvre in Paris

• The Geographer (), Städel Museum score Frankfurt am Main

• Lady Writing a Letter with companion Maid (c. –), National Gallery of Ireland remove Dublin, Ireland

• The Allegory of Faith (–), Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

• Lady Seated at out Virginal (c. –), National Gallery in London

Notes

References