VERMEER, Johannes, Featured Paintings in Detail (3)

VERMEER, Johannes
Featured Paintings in Detail
(3)

VERMEER, Johannes
A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman
c. 1658
Oil on canvas, 66,3 x 76,5 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

VERMEER, Johannes
A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman (detail)
c. 1658
Oil on canvas

VERMEER, Johannes
c. 1658
Oil on canvas
Like A Lady and Two Gentlemen, this
seduction scene contains an open
window which features the warning figure
of Temperance.

VERMEER, Johannes
c. 1658
Oil on canvas
Women who had become intoxicated on
wine were considered to be the
embodiment of sin, and this is a motif
central to Vermeer's work. According to
Jacob Cats, a famous popular teacher of
the seventeenth century, women should
be forbidden drink altogether, as alcohol
was the first step towards whoring.

VERMEER, Johannes
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window
1657
Oil on canvas, 83 x 64,5 cm
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

VERMEER, Johannes
(detail)
1657
Oil on canvas
In this painting, a young woman stands in
the center of the composition, facing in
profile an open window to the left. The
window reflects the girl's features. She is
precisely silhouetted against a bare wall
that reflects the light and envelops her in
its luminosity.

VERMEER, Johannes
(detail)
1657
Oil on canvas

VERMEER, Johannes
(detail)
1657
Oil on canvas
In the foreground is a table covered with
the same Oriental rug encountered in the
Woman Asleep. On it is the identical Delft
plate with fruit.

VERMEER, Johannes
The Procuress
1656
Oil on canvas, 143 x 130 cm

VERMEER, Johannes
The Procuress (detail)
1656
Oil on canvas

VERMEER, Johannes
The Procuress (detail)
1656
Oil on canvas
It has been suggested that the smiling
man on the left holding a lute and a glass
is a self-portrait. If so, it is the only time
Vermeer allows us to approach him on
such intimate terms. But the identification
remains speculative; no visual or
documentary evidence corroborates it.

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VERMEER, Johannes
The Procuress
There is no relationship between this painting and other authentic works by the master, neither in the conception nor the execution. One has attempted to establish a connection
between this work and the one by Dirck van Baburen from 1622, now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. However, aside from the subject matter, the Dresden painting has nothing in
common with the one in Boston. The latter seems to have been part of Vermeer van Delft's stock in trade and appears as such in two of his paintings. At one time, it must have been
the property of his mother-in-law.
The fact that Vermeer van Delft was a dealer and thus owned a number of works by other masters does not necessarily imply that he took them as models for his own productions;
even if he used some of them as background decorations in his paintings.
However, this painting is usually considered as a point of departure for an appraisal of Vermeer's achievement. There is very little indication of the interior and more action in it than
there will be in the later paintings. The erotic subject, size and decorative splendour are all closely related to the Utrecht Caravaggisti painted a generation earlier. The chiaroscuro
effect and the warm colour harmony of reds and yellows also indicate a connection with works painted in the early fifties by Rembrandt and his followers; perhaps Maes, who had
settled in nearby Dordrecht by 1653, was the conduit.

VERMEER, Johannes
In this painting, a young woman stands in the center of the composition, facing in profile an open window to the left. In the foreground is a table covered with the same Oriental rug
encountered in the Woman Asleep. On it is the identical Delft plate with fruit. The window reflects the girl's features, while to the right the large green curtain forms a deceptive frame. She
is precisely silhouetted against a bare wall that reflects the light and envelops her in its luminosity.
We are here confronted with one of the salient aspects of Vermeer's sensibility and originality. It is the stillness that stands out, the inner absorption, the remoteness from the outer world.
She concentrates entirely upon the letter, holding it firmly and tautly, while she absorbs its content with utmost attention.
Much has been written about the trompe-l'oeil effect of the curtain. It is a pictorial artifice used by many other Dutch masters and in keeping with an old European tradition. Rembrandt,
Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, and many still-life and even landscape painters made use of such curtains as a means of simulating effects that now seem theatrical.

VERMEER, Johannes
A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman
The leaden window to the left was entirely overpainted at the time of the purchase by the museum and replaced by a curtain and a view upon a landscape through an open window.
Vermeer's works set the tone for representations of the upper bourgeoisie, a social level more refined than that depicted by his contemporaries. This type of setting required finer and
smoother pictorial rendition than, for instance, the Milkmaid.
Like A Lady and Two Gentlemen, this seduction scene contains an open window which features the warning figure of Temperance.

VERMEER, Johannes
Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch 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.

VERMEER, Johannes, Featured Paintings in Detail (3)

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VERMEER, Johannes, Featured Paintings in Detail (3)