Jan Vermeer(Johannes Vermeer) was one of the greatest Dutch artists in the Dutch Golden Age. He is famous for his technique and treatment of the light using in his works. For easier to immediately understand him, below, one of the most famous paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring, is his works.

Life

Vermeer was born on October 31, 1632, in Delft, Netherlands. His childhood is a mystery but someone said that Vermeer began to learn about art around the middle of the 1640s. His father, Reynier Vermeer, was an art dealer and silk weaver who probably was the earliest art enlightenment for Jan. However, his father dead in 1652, and then probably Vermeer took over his businesses of art and inn.

In April 1653, Jan Vermeer married Catharina Bolenes, who is from a wealthful Catholic family. They had 15 children, but this might be the reason for their unfortunately poor life. On 29 December, Vermeer joined the Guild of Saint Luke, which an art association helped Vermeer sold his works.

1672 the Rampjaar, disaster year, came, the Dutch Republic was almost crushed by the attack from France, Britain and other powers. Vermeer’s life is totally destroyed by this catastrophe. His arts were hard to sell and he almost had no economic income for years. Ultimately, Vermeer and his family moved to the home of his wife’s mother, Maria Thins. Until 15 December 1675, he suddenly died of illness.

His wife described his death by

“ …during the ruinous war with France he not only was unable to sell any of his art but also, to his great detriment, was left sitting with the paintings of other masters that he was dealing in. As a result and owing to the great burden of his children having no means of his own, he lapsed into such decay and decadence, which he had so taken to heart that, as if he had fallen into a frenzy, in a day and a half he went from being healthy to being dead.“

Art Style

In early, the warm colours of The Procuress relate Jan Vermeer’s style to the Rembrandt school, but the topic and composition displayed the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggism, of Caravaggio.

The Soldier and Laughing Girl noted the shift of Vermeer’s style because the pointillism first time appeared in his works.

Jan Vermeer usually made the light comes from the left in his works and used the light to build contrast with the shadings on the figures. He liked using yellow, blue and gray. Although some of those pigments are extremely expensive in that period, such as the lapis lazuli, he still used a lot of them in his arts even after his life was very impoverished after the Rampjaar.

Since the unimaginable details in Vermeer’s arts and his close relationship with Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who invented single-lensed microscopes, a lot of people believe that Vermeer used camera obscura to support his creation.

Personal Opinions

Jan Vermeer is an unfortunate master. Although only a few of his works left now, we can still see what a strong dominance towards the light. His light is not so exactly sharp like Caravaggio, but more is a kind of gentle and warm. It makes me feel peaceful and comfortable, and even kind of truly touched with the warm light. His figures are not like others too, that are more normal and realistic. I really Raphael’s figures, but his paintings still are something untouchable that far away from life, however, Vermeer’s paintings are the absolutely normal humans. This sets the audiences closer to the art itself.

References

https://www.notablebiographies.com/Tu-We/Vermeer-Jan.html https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b0/Johannes_Vermeer_-The_Procuress-_Google_Art_Project.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/Johannes_Vermeer_-De_Soldaat_en_het_Lachende_Meisje-_Google_Art_Project.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Meisje_met_de_parel.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer