Jan Vermeer was a Dutch painter, active in the Dutch Baroque period. Beginning with large-scale biblical and mythological scenes, he went down in history as an author of household painting and genre portraits which stand out with a masterful use of pigment and pureness of light. Vermeer also produced several urban landscapes and allegorical scenes.
Background
As Johannes Vermeer was baptized on October 31, 1632, in the Reformed Church of Delft, Netherlands, it is believed that he was born earlier the same month. He was a son of Reijnier Janszoon, a middle-class weaver of silk (caffa), who later tried himself in innkeeping and art dealing. Vermeer's mother, Digna Baltus, was probably an illiterate homemaker. The painter had at least one elder sister, Gertruy.
Education
There is no reliable information on Johannes Vermeer's years of study. It is supposed that Johannes could become an apprentice of his father, who dealt with art of painting from about 1625, in the middle of the 1640s.
Since Vermeer's name is absent in Delft archival records of the late 1640s or early 1650s, it is possible that, as other aspiring Dutch artists, he traveled to Italy, France or Flanders where he trained in painting by exploring the art of various great masters. He also might have trained in some other artistic centres in the Netherlands, perhaps Utrecht or Amsterdam, where he would have discovered the works of Rembrandt van Rijn.
On December 29, 1653, Vermeer was accepted to the Guild of St. Luke. According to the terms of the guild, the membership in it was possible only after six years of serious prior training in painting under the master, who was its member too.
Since Vermeer was somehow related to such artists, as Leonard Bramer and Gerard ter Borch, it is possible that he could have been trained by one of them. In addition, it is possible, that Vermeer's teacher was artist Carel Fabritius, a pupil of Rembrandt. Also, a great influence of Peter de Hoogh, the Dutch master of genre painting, is apparent in Vermeer's work. Pieter van Groenwegen and Abraham Bloemaert are also cited by some scholars as possible mentors of Vermeer.
Career
The start of Johannes Vermeer's career as a painter can be counted from 1653 when he joined the Delft Guild of Saint Luke on December 29. The membership provided him with many prosperous patrons and liaisons necessary for a successful career in the area. The early works of that period, mainly large-scale biblical and mythological paintings, like Diana and Her Nymphs, Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, or The Procuress, showed the signs of Rembrandt, Caravaggio and such Utrecht school artists as Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburnen. Vermeer also drew inspiration from his native town of Delft.
By the middle of the 1650s, Jan Vermeer had abandoned biblical subjects and shifted to genre paintings which subsequently made him best known among descendants. It is thought that it was Gerard Terborch, a master of depicting domestic activities, who pushed the young artist to pursue scenes of everyday life. One of the examples of Vermeer's first attempts in the genre was Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. Another artist who exerted influence on Vermeer's interior scenes of the period was Pieter de Hooch. Although there is no documentary proof of the connection between the two artists, it is evident that their choice of the subject matter the same as their style were quite similar during this time.
Many of Vermeer's notable masterpieces were produced by him during the next decade. Earning a reputation in his native city of Delft, the artist was appointed head of the local Guild of Saint Luke in 1662. It is very likely that Vermeer's works were purchased by the small circle of patrons at the time, including art dealer Pieter van Ruijven who became his long-term financial supporter for the most part of his subsequent artistic path.
As his subject matter, Johannes Vermeer gave preference to women reading or writing letters, playing musical instruments, or adorning themselves with jewelry at the pinnacle of his career. Young Woman with a Water Pitcher and Woman with a Pearl Necklace are among his best-known masterpieces. The Woman in Blue Reading a Letter is among the examples of such works through which the artist aspired to express the inner harmony within everyday life.
From 1670 to 1671, Vermeer headed the Guild of Saint Luke again. The late works of the artist, such as Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid and The Guitar Player, stand out with more direct, bolder technique in contrast to the early canvases of the 1660s.
Although Johannes Vermeer had a possibility to paint for his own pleasure due to the prosperity of his spouse's family, his love to such expensive pigments like lapis lazuli or deep carmine led the family to poverty within the course of time. The situation was aggravated by the instable economic climate in the country caused by the invasion of French, German and British troops in 1672. Following the collapse of the art market, shortly before his death, Vermeer lost almost all his income and collected enormous debts.
Baptized in the Protestant tradition and likely having a Calvinist upbringing, Johannes Vermeer converted to Catholicism before the marriage to a Catholic woman Catherina Bolnes.
Views
Although Johannes Vermeer was inspired in his art by the ordinary everyday life of his era, he can be classified as a real history painter, who expressed moral and philosophical ideas through his household canvases seeming to be simple at first glance. Woman Holding a Balance is a vivid example.
Another work by Vermeer, notably The Art of Painting, is a possible visualization of the philosophical side of his approach to his craft. Clio, juxtaposed to a large wall map of the Netherlands, seemed to suggest the artist brings fame to his native city and country through his knowledge of history and his capacity to depict elevated subjects.
Vermeer was extremely attentive to details in each of his canvases, that is the possible cause for such a little legacy he left behind. He most likely took his time to carefully consider the composition and the way of its representation.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
Germaine Greer, Australian writer: "The art of a Vermeer...seeks not to amaze and appal but to invite the observer to come closer, to close with the painting, peer into it, become intimate with it. Such art reinforces human dignity."
Arshile Gorky, Armenian-American painter: "Vermeer does not just make a leaf and place it in the design, he relates space and leaf."
Arshile Gorky, Armenian-American painter: "Johannes Vermeer paints in thin layers – there is no waste effort – and those small dots – no, they are not like Seurat's, though they contain all the light the pointillist may have wished for, concentrated, hovering before the object, but not obliterating it...Vermeer is not a sun painter, but rather a moon-painter – like Uccello – that's good, it is the pure, final stage of art, the moment when it becomes more real than reality."
Simon Jenkins, journalist: "Vermeer was an authentic artistic genius – even if he did cheat."
Marcel Proust, novelist: "Thanks to art, instead of seeing one world, our own, we see it multiplied and as many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite and which, whether their name be Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us their unique rays many centuries after the hearth from which they emanate is extinguished."
Connections
Johannes Vermeer married a Catholic woman Catherina Bolnes (Bolenes), born into a prosperous family, in April 1653. Later, the couple took up residence in the house of the Bolnes's mother, Maria Thins, distantly related to the Utrecht painter Abraham Bloemaert.
Vermeer and Bolnes had fifteen children together, four of whom died before being baptized. The artist's relatives' wills mentioned the names of 10 of his children – Maertge, Elisabeth, Cornelia, Aleydis, Beatrix, Johannes, Gertruyd, Franciscus, Catharina and Ignatius. A moderately successful artist in his lifetime, Vermeer made his wife and children inherit his debts after his death.
Johannes Vermeer: 40 Baroque Paintings
The book contains 40 reproductions of portraits, landscapes and genre scenes by the artist with data page for all of them with museum links and Top 50 Museums of the World page.
Jan Vermeer
The book provides a comprehensive study of Vermeer's life and work, presents commentaries on his painting techniques and examines each one of the Dutch artist's authenticated paintings.
1981
Vermeer: Portraits of a Lifetime
A revolutionary reexamination of the mystique and mythology surrounding the 17th-century Dutch Master painter, Johannes Vermeer.