Jan or Johannes Vermeer van Delft (1632–1675), a Dutch genre painter who lived and worked in Delft all his life, created some of the most exquisite paintings in Western art.
His works are rare. Of the 35 or 36 paintings generally attributed to him, most 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. He produced meticulously constructed interiors with just one or two figures — usually women. These are intimate genre paintings in which the principal figure is invariably engaged in some everyday activity. Often the light enters Vermeer’s paintings from a window. He was a master at depicting the way light illuminates objects.
During the late 1650s, Vermeer began to place a new emphasis on depicting figures within carefully composed interior spaces. Other Dutch painters painted similar scenes, but they were less concerned with the articulation of the space than with the description of the figures and their actions.
Little is known for certain about Vermeer’s life and career. Not much is known about Vermeer’s apprenticeship as an artist either. After his death, Vermeer was overlooked by all but the most discriminating collectors and art historians for more than 200 years. His few pictures were attributed to other artists. Only after 1866, when the French critic W. Thore-Burger ‘rediscovered’ him, did Vermeer’s works become widely known and his works heralded as genuine Vermeer.
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Vermeer paid meticulous attention to the scenery in his paintings.
