Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. He is considered one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. He produced relatively few paintings, primarily earning his living as an art dealer. He was not wealthy; at his death, his wife was left in debt.
Paintings by Johannes Vermeer
The Astronomer (1664)
The Astronomer (Dutch: De astronoom) is a painting finished in 1668 by the Johannes Vermeer, a painter of the Dutch Golden Age. It is in oil on canvas with dimensions 51 cm × 45 cm (20 in × 18 in). The Astronomer is now in the collection of the Louvre in Paris.
Portrayals of scientists were a favourite topic in 17th-century Dutch painting and Vermeer's oeuvre includes both this astronomer and the slightly later The Geographer. Both are believed to portray the same man, possibly Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. A 2017 study indicated that the canvas for the two works came from the same bolt of material, confirming their close relationship. It has been proposed that Vermeer used a camera obscura as an aid to reconstruct the geometry of the rooms and the objects in his paintings. Both paintings portray the same room and furniture, slightly rearranged.
View of Delft (1661)
View of Delft (Dutch: Zicht op Delft) is an oil painting by Johannes Vermeer, painted c. 1659–1661. The painting of the Dutch artist's hometown is among his best known. It is one of three known paintings of Delft by Vermeer, along with The Little Street and the lost painting House Standing in Delft, and his only cityscape. According to art historian Emma Barker, cityscapes across water, which were popular in the Netherlands at the time, celebrated the city and its trade. Vermeer's View of Delft has been held in the Dutch Royal Cabinet of Paintings at the Mauritshuis in The Hague since its establishment in 1822.
A technical analysis shows that Vermeer used calcite, lead white, yellow ochre, natural ultramarine, and madder lake pigments.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665)
Girl with a Pearl Earring (Dutch: Meisje met de parel) is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, dated c. 1665. Going by various names over the centuries, it acquired its present title towards the end of the 20th century. The work has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902 and has been the subject of various literary and cinematic treatments.
The painting is a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a "head" that was not meant to be a portrait. It depicts a European girl wearing "exotic dress", an "oriental turban", and what appears to be a very large pearl as an earring. The identity of the subject is unknown. She may have been real or imagined, or she might represent a Sibyl or a biblical figure. She has also been said to be the artist's eldest daughter, Maria, though some art historians dismiss this speculation as an anachronism. The work is oil on canvas and is 44.5 cm (17.5 in) tall by 39 cm (15 in) wide. It is signed "IVMeer" but not dated. It is estimated to have been painted around 1665.
The Milkmaid (Vermeer) (1660)
The Milkmaid (Dutch: De melkmeid or Het melkmeisje), sometimes called The Kitchen Maid (Dutch: De keukenmeid), is an oil-on-canvas painting of a "milkmaid", in fact, a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, which regards it as "unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions".
The exact year of the painting's completion is unknown, with estimates varying by source. The Rijksmuseum estimates it as circa 1658. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, it was painted in about 1657 or 1658. The "Essential Vermeer" website gives a broader range of 1658–1661.
The Little Street (1658)
The Little Street (Het Straatje) is a painting by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, executed c. 1657–1658. It is exhibited at the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, and signed, below the window in the lower left-hand corner, "I V MEER".
The painting is made in oil on canvas, and it is a relatively small painting, being 54.3 centimetres (21.4 in) high by 44.0 centimetres (17.3 in) wide.
The Art of Painting (1667)
The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting (Dutch: Allegorie op de schilderkunst), or Painter in his Studio, is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is owned by the Austrian Republic and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
Many art historians think that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting. Its composition and iconography make it the most complex Vermeer work of all. After Vermeer's Christ in the House of Martha and Mary and The Procuress it is his largest work.
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (1658)
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window (Dutch: Brieflezend meisje bij het venster), also known as Lady reading at an open window, is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer. Completed in approximately 1657–1659, the painting is on display at the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, which has held it since 1742. For many years, the attribution of the painting—which features a young Dutch woman reading a letter before an open window—was lost, with first Rembrandt and then Pieter de Hooch being credited for the work before it was properly identified in 1880. After World War II, the painting was briefly in possession of the Soviet Union. In 2017, tests revealed that the painting had been altered after the painter's death.
The painting was laboriously restored to its original composition between 2018 and 2021 using scalpel and microscope. It now shows Cupid in a "painting within a painting" on the wall, and since the restoration, hangs at the museum in Dresden as Vermeer painted it.
Woman Holding a Balance (1665)
Woman Holding a Balance (Dutch: Vrouw met weegschaal), also called Woman Testing a Balance, is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
At one time the painting, completed c. 1662–1663, was known as Woman Weighing Gold, but closer evaluation has determined that the balance in her hand is empty. Opinions on the theme and symbolism of the painting differ, with the woman alternatively viewed as a symbol of holiness or earthliness.
The Concert (Vermeer) (1663)
The Concert (Dutch: Het concert) (c. 1664) is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer depicting a man and two women performing music. It was stolen on March 18, 1990, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston and remains missing to the present.
Although The Concert has been dated stylistically to the mid-1660s, it is first documented only in 1780. It was acquired by Isabella Stewart Gardner in an 1892 auction in Paris for $5,000
The Geographer (1668)
The Geographer (Dutch: De geograaf) is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1668–1669, and is now in the collection of the Städel museum in Frankfurt, Germany. It is closely related to Vermeer's The Astronomer, for instance using the same model in the same dress, and has sometimes been considered a pendant painting to it. A 2017 study indicated that the canvas for the two works came from the same bolt of material.
This is one of only three paintings Vermeer signed and dated (the other two are The Astronomer and The Procuress).
The Music Lesson (1662)
The Music Lesson, Woman Seated at a Virginal or A Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman by Johannes Vermeer is a painting of a young female pupil playing a virginal during a music lesson with a male teacher. The man's mouth is slightly agape giving the impression that he is singing along with the music that the young girl is playing. This suggests that there is a relationship between the two figures and the idea of love and music being bridged together. This was a common theme among Dutch art in this time period. Vermeer consistently used the same objects within his paintings such as the draped rug, the white water jug, various instruments, tiled floor and windows that convey light and shadows. This is one of few paintings produced by Vermeer which were kept in his home until his death in 1675 when his family was forced to sell them. It became a part of the Royal Collection, and it is currently on display in the Picture Gallery at Buckingham Palace in London.
The picture was sold in May 1696 in Delft, part of the collection of Jacob Dissous, which included many Vermeers. It was later acquired by Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini in 1718, with Pellegrini's collection later being bought by Joseph Smith.
Woman Reading a Letter (Vermeer) (1664)
Woman Reading a Letter (Dutch: Brieflezende vrouw) is a painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, produced in around 1663. It has been part of the collection of the City of Amsterdam since the Van der Hoop bequest in 1854, and in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam since it opened in 1885, the first Vermeer it acquired.
The central element of the painting is a woman in blue standing in front of a window (not depicted) reading a letter. The woman appears to be pregnant, although many have argued that the woman's rounded figure is simply a result of the fashions of the day. Although the woman's loose clothing may be suggestive, pregnancy was very rarely depicted in art during this period.