Vermeer´s life.

 

We don´t know much about Vermeer´s life. Some sources say that he was baptized in Delft the 31^st October 1632; he was the second son and the only male. His father was born in 1591 in Antwerp (Belgium). In 1611, he moved to Amsterdam.

Johannes Vermeer was considered to be a Baroque painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of ordinary life. It is important to say that his entire life was spent in the town of Delft. Delft is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, the Netherlands. Delft is primarily known for its typically Dutch town centre and also for Vermeer´s, Delft Blue pottery.

Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial painter in his lifetime. He seems to have never been particularly wealthy, perhaps due to the fact that he didn´t produce many paintings, leaving his wife and eleven children in debt at his death. Vermeer didn´t paint much for the public market; most of his paintings were for promoters that appreciated his art. Maybe this is the explanation for his low artistic production. One of his promoters was Hendrick van Buylen, a baker probably the same to whom the French nobleman Balthazar Monconys had visited, and when he died, he found a note in his diary saying: “In Delft, I met the painter Vermeer who didn´t have any power in his paintings. But in the baker´s house we could see one which had cost a hundred pound, but it real value, in my opinion, was six pistols”

Another Vermeer´s protector was Jacob Dissios, proprietary of the printing house in Delft.

Vermeer´s last years were darken by the dramatic and terrible economic situation. He accumulated debts and he was obliged to solicit a credit for the prize of 1000 florins (European coins). The reason of his ruin was the war between France and Holland.

Vermeer was buried the 15^th December 1675. He was really ill and he couldn´t continue living anymo

Ekphrastic Poetry

• What is Ekphrastic Poetry?

It is the conversation between two pieces of art. The writer interprets a work of visual art and then creates a narrative in verse from that represents his or her interpretation and reaction to that painting, photograph, sculpture or other artistic creation.

• How can we use this method?

Claire told us yesterday that we could use this writing method in order to create our essay on the corresponding painting we have.  It is a kind of writing in which you write whatever comes to your mind in a moment and then without thinking on that just write another piece. She told us we could write for example about the yellow curtain in almost all paintings and the paragraph after it about the feeling of the woman.

As I understand Ekphrastic Poetry is a mixture of different pieces of writing all talking or describing the same painting. But how can someone make sense out of that?

1668: Vermeer’ Age, 36

VERMEER’S LIFE & ART:

Perhaps Vermeer signs and dates The Astronomer 1668. The dating of The Astronomer is considered to have been added later on by another hand. The only other dated painting by Vermeer is the early “The Procuress.” Some scholars believe that Delft citizen Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who was by then internationally recognized for his studies in optics and scientific observations, posed for The Astronomer, although portraits of Leeuwenhoek bear little resemblance to the seated man in Vermeer’s picture.

SCIENCE & PHILOSOPHY:

Robert Hooke: “Discourse on Earthquakes”.

Newton invents the reflecting telescope, building the first telescope based on a mirror (reflector) instead of a lens (refractor).

First accurate description of red corpuscles by Anthony van Leeuwenhoek. Leeuwenhoek was born in the same year as Delft and is often associated to the artist for their interest in optics.

• From A Timeline of Vermeer’s Life – 1668-1675, Late Period.

A Love Letter

It might be the case that when somebody sees this painting cannot really tell the letter the woman in yellow is given is a love letter. However, I have found a  theory which briefly offers a very interesting and wit hint to let unexperts in art like me realise that the letter in the drawing by Vermeer is in fact a love letter. I must say that I certainly think the whole idea this theory maintains is absolutely surprising since I would never have thought a painter would pay atention to this type of details that surely enough will not be noticed by many viewers who lack the artistic knowledge this requires.  Here follows the possible explanation:

 

Although the lady has not yet opened the letter it is apparent from the picture that it is from a lover. The two pictures in the background indicate this. A painting within a painting often indicates the artist’s intention in the picture. Here the lower painting is a seascape. In the seventeenth-century language of imagery the sea stood for love, and a ship for a lover. The emblem written by Jan Krul ‘Far from home, never far from my heart’ expresses this well. The upper picture shows a man walking along a sandy path: as in the painting of the ship, there is the suggestion of a person on a journey.

 

 Emblem by Jan Harmensz Krul, Far from home, never far from my heart, 1640

A First Side View

When, for the first time, we face a painting like this (The Guitar Player) we might not notice anything at first. What we see at first side is just an image of a girl who is just playing a guitar. Althought we do not see anyone else in the painting, it seems that she is looking at somebody. Her eyes seem to be focusing on something or somebody. Her fingers´ position suggest that she is procuding sounds. She seems to be playing for somebody who can be hearing and does not appear in the painting.

The girl playing the guitar expresses delicacy and softness. Behind her there is anothing painting (which is very common in Vermeer´s paintings). This is a painting of a landscape. Finally, on the right of the girl there is a table with two old books on the top of it and also a kind of rag.

Considering light on Vermeer’s paintings

After having watched the film The Girl with a Pear Earring I have noticed that many of Vermeer’s paintings are composed in a similar way, in the sense that they are set in a room with only one window that provides light to the place. Some examples are The Girl with a wine glass, A Maid Asleep, A Girl Reading a letter by an open window, Officer and Laughing Girl or The Milk Maid among others. All of them seem to be placed in the same room. They all have a window on the left of the picture, sometimes half-opened, other times closed. This window is the source of light for the picture. The light is strategically placed in the sense that it is directed to the main figures in the painting. Analysing the picture I have chosen, The Girl with a Wine Glass, the light draws parallel lines that start in the window and open up across the picture until the opposite side. The two diagonal lines of light enclose inside the two main figures, the girl holding the wine glass and the patron. The person by the window is regarded to a secondary position with nearly no light.

Poem on ‘The Milkmaid’ by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

The poem is taken from Marilyn’s ‘In Quiet Light’, which was published 8 years ago. This book is full of poems on the different Vermeer’s paintings, and this is the one on mine. It’s nice to have a look at them and see another different way of describing the works.

(As you already know, some of these poems are included in our book)

There is no flattery here: this thick-muscled,

broad-bottomed girl has milked cows at

dawn and carried sloshing pails

hung from a yoke on shoulders

broadened to the task. She kneaded

fat mounds of dough, sinking heavy fists deep

into voluptuous bread, innocent

and sensuous as a child in spring mud.

Evenings she mends and patches

the coarse wool of her bodice, smelling

her own sweat, sweet like grass and dung

in the barn or like warm milk

fresh from the udder.

 

Her world is grained and gritty, deep-

textured, rough-hewn, earth-toned, solid,

simple and crude. Reed and brass and clay,

wheat and flax and plaster turned to human use

have not come far from the loamy fields

where they were mined and gathered. The things

she handles are round and square, though-

fibered and strong, familiar as flesh to the touch.

 

The jug rests in her hand like a baby’s

bottom. She bends to her task like a mother

tending her child, hand and eye trained

to this work, heart left to its pondering.

 

How like tenderness, this look

of complete attention, how like a prayer

that blesses these loaves, this milk

(round like this belly, full like this breast),

given daily into her keeping, this handmaid

on whom the light falls,

haloed in white, hallowed by the gaze

that sees her thus, heavy, thick-lipped,

weathered and earthbound, blessed

and full of grace.

Tracy Chevalier.

 

 

Last week, as my partners have already explained in some articles, in Claire´s class we read an interview with Tracy Chevalier. This interview is in our orange book and it talks about why Chevalier chose Vermeer´s work to write about. If we search information on the internet, we realize that there are plenty of things about this writer (interviews, ideas, opinions…). But, the question is: Who is Tracy Chevalier. I´m writing this article, because we don´t know anything about her; only that she wrote The Girl with a Pear Earring.

 

 

Tracy Chevalier (born October 1962 in Washington, DC) is a bestselling historical novelist. She is of Romande Swiss descent (with possible French Huguenotancestry) on her father’s side, and lives in London with her husband and son.

 

Chevalier was raised in Washington, D.C and graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, Maryland. After receiving her B.A. in English from Oberlin College, she moved to England in 1984 where she worked several years as a reference book editor. Leaving her job in 1993, she began a year long M.A. program in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. Her tutors on the course were novelists Malcolm Bradbury and Rose Tremain.

 

Her most recent book, published in March 2007, is Burning Bright and concerns two children who become neighbours of William Blake in London in 1792. Her career began with the book The Virgin Blue but she became well known with her novel Girl with a Pearl Earring a book based on the creation of the famous painting by Vermeer. The film based on the novel received three Academy Award nominations in 2004.

 

As well as writing books, Chevalier is Chair of the UK’s Society of Author.

Asleep

I have to enter the net in order to find information about the painting I have chosen. I was supposed to analyze “young woman sleeping”, and I realized that there are many versions and hypothesis about why is that maid asleep at the table. When I saw the painting for the first time, it attracted me because the face of the maid seemed calmed and she seemed to be in a stage over tranquillity and with her mind flying away from all the perfection that could be seen in the scene. It seemed to me that she was taking a good rest after a hard day of cleaning and doing all the housework. But there are many writers who have claimed that the blush in her cheeks and that profound sleep was due to the drunkenness of the figure.

 

According to john Nash, “The evidence that the young woman in the Metropolitan painting is, indeed, drunk, is there on the table before her, in the form of not one but two glasses and a wine jug. A small wine-glass suitable for a young woman stands almost empty within her reach. The overturned glass at the near side of the table beside the white wine jug is a roemer (or rummer) of the kind used by men. Neither glass is immediately obvious. The woman’s glass appears to be intentionally concealed, being almost submerged within the brilliant reds of the carpet, but the overturned rummer has been abraded by overzealous cleaning, or, possibly, to remove obvious signs of indulgence.”

 

 

        I have to consider the experts while approaching the painting so I have to take into account John Nash’s view among others. But obviously in the creative process in which I will be involved, the certainty can be left aside for the sake of inspiration.

 

 

Tracy Chevalier. Questions about Girl with a Pearl Earing.

On Thursday we talk about Tracy Chevalier and we read a short interview. I thought that it was really interesting how a writer can write such a brilliant story taking as inspiration sorce a painting. For that reason, I decided to search more information about Tracy Checalier. So, there is an interviw about her novel Girl with a Pearl Earing which I think that can be quite interesting.

Questions about Girl with a Pearl Earing

• What inspired you to write about the girl in Vermeer’s painting?
  
  I have had a copy of that painting for a long time. I love it because it is so beautiful and mysterious. The expression on the girl’s face is ambiguous – sometimes she looks happy, sometimes sad, sometimes innocent, sometimes seductive. I was always curious about what she was thinking, and one day I wondered what Vermeer did to her to make her look like that. I began to understand that the painting is more than a picture of the girl, but also a portrait of the relationship between the painter and the model. I thought there must be a story behind her look, but when I found out that we don’t know who the model for the painting was, I realized I would have to make up the story myself.
• Why did you make the girl a servant?
  
  In the painting the girl’s clothes are very plain compared to other women Vermeer painted, and yet the pearl is clearly luxurious. I was fascinated by that contrast, and it seemed clear to me that the pearl was not hers. At the same time, I also felt she knew Vermeer well, as her gaze is very direct and knowing. Some historians think she was his eldest daughter, but I don’t think that’s a look a daughter would give her father – it’s too seductive. So I thought, Who else would be close to him but not related? And I thought of a servant.
• How much of the story is true? Did Griet really exist?
  
  Griet did not exist. We don’t know who the girl in the painting is, nor any of the other models for Vermeer’s works. So I made up that she was his servant. But I tried to stay true to the facts that we do know about his life. Vermeer did grow up in Delft and lived there all his life. He was Protestant but married a Catholic woman, Catharina Bolnes, and probably converted. They had 11 children, and another 4 who died in infancy. They lived with his mother-in-law Maria Thins in the Catholic quarter of town. Though the house doesn’t exist any more, there is a list of its contents that was attached to his will, so we know what rooms were in the house, what furniture they had and what else they owned. They had a servant called Tanneke. Vermeer was an art dealer and there were paintings all over the walls. He was in debt quite a lot. It is likely that he painted very slowly. Antony van Leeuwenhoek, inventor of the microscope and much interested in lenses and other optical devices, including the camera obscura, was the executor of Vermeer’s will and very likely a friend.Other than that, there is so much we don’t know that I had to fill in. Primarily we don’t know what he was like as a person. There are no letters to or from him, and few references to him in writings of the time. That is what I had to create: was he a nice man? Was he quiet or a talker? Did he prefer to be around men or women? Did he spend a lot of time at home or go out drinking every night? Was he a gossip or loyal to his friends? Which was more important to him: family or work? All these questions I had to answer myself.

  In the end I based his character on what I saw as a contradiction in his life: he painted such quiet, calm paintings and yet he had 11 children! How could he have managed that, other than to feel ruthless about his paintings to the point of separating out his working life from his daily life. Hence he cut off his studio from his wife and family, and that caused the problems I wrote about.
  

• How long did it take you to write it?
  
  It took me eight months to research and write the book. That is very quick for me, but on the day I began research I discovered that I was pregnant, and I decided that I must finish the book before the baby came – I wasn’t sure if my brain would remain the same once I had a baby!I also wanted the book to feel as if it were written in one sitting (so that you would want to read it in one sitting), and in order to do that I really needed to write the book in one chunk of time rather than divided up pre-baby and post-baby. So I had just eight months. It meant that I made some practical aesthetic decisions: it would be a short book, told from one person’s point of view, and the structure would be linear – I didn’t have the time to be experimental. In a way, though, those decisions also mirrored Vermeer’s aesthetic of simplicity and understatement, so it worked out very well.
• How did you research the book?
  
  I began by looking at a lot of paintings – not just Vermeer’s, but other Dutch artists’ paintings of the time as well. There was a fashion then for paintings of everyday life, and looking at them built up a kind of visual reference for me. Then I began to read – about Vermeer, about painting, about the history of the time. It helped that there had been a major Vermeer exhibition a few years back and a number of books about this sort of thing had just come out. Then of course I went to Delft, also to Amsterdam, to see for myself. Finally I wrote the book, going back to sources to answer questions along the way.
• Do you paint, or have you ever modeled for a painting?
  
  I took a painting class while I was researching the book. I was really terrible at it. I have never modeled for a painting but I did talk to a friend who is a portrait painter about the relationship that can develop between painter and model.
• Do you have any training as an art historian?

          Nope. I’m a novice, just like you.

• How did you decide on names for your characters? How are they
  pronounced?Many of the names are of known people: Vermeer’s wife was called Catharina, her mother was Maria Thins, and the children’s names are all recorded, so I didn’t have to make any of those up. As for Griet herself, I wrote down female Dutch names I came across as I was doing research. One day I wrote down Griet and knew that was it: short, tidy, definite. It’s short for Margriet, and a year after the book was published I discovered that Margriet means “pearl” in Dutch. Amazing, eh?
• Does Griet love Vermeer? Does Vermeer love Griet?
  It’s difficult to answer this. (I know, you’d think the writer would know!) In many ways the point of the book is that whatever they may feel, they don’t analyze it or expect to act on it, nor do they expect anything from each other. Griet knows it’s an impossibility and never dares to anticipate what Vermeer might feel for her. And Vermeer – well, he may feel something for her but in the end his passion for the perfect painting is stronger.

 

If you want to know more about Tracy Chevalier and her works you can vistit the following site in which you can find the complete interview.

Tracy Chevalier
 

Vermeer’s technique

Vermeer produced transparent colours by applying paint onto the canvas in loosely granular layers, a technique called pointillé (not to be confused with pointillism). No drawings have been securely attributed to Vermeer, and his paintings offer few clues to preparatory methods. David Hockney, among other historians and advocates of the Hockney-Falco thesis, has speculated that Vermeer used a camera obscura to achieve precise positioning in his compositions, and this view seems to be supported by certain light and perspective effects which would result from the use of such lenses and not the naked eye alone; however, the extent of Vermeer’s dependence upon the camera obscura is disputed by historians.

There is no other seventeenth century artist who from very early on in his career employed, in the most lavish way, the exorbitantly expensive pigment lapis lazuli, natural ultramarine. Not only used in elements that are intended to be shown as appearance: the earth colours umber and ochre should be understood as warm light from the strongly-lit interior, reflecting its multiple colours back onto the wall.

This working method most probably was inspired by Vermeer’s understanding of Leonardo’s observations that the surface of every object partakes of the colour of the adjacent object.^[5] This means that no object is ever seen entirely in its natural colour.

A comparable but even more remarkable yet effectual use of natural ultramarine is in The Girl with a Wineglass (Braunschweig). The shadows of the red satin dress are underpainted in natural ultramarine, and due to this underlying blue paint layer, the red lake and vermilion mixture applied over it acquires a slightly purple, cool and crisp appearance that is most powerful.

Even after Vermeer’s supposed financial breakdown following the so-called rampjaar (year of disaster) in 1672, he continued to employ natural ultramarine most generously, such as in the above-mentioned “Lady Seated at a Virginal.” This could suggest that Vermeer was supplied with materials by a collector, and would coincide with John Michael Montias’ theory of Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven being Vermeer’s patron.

(Taken from the Wiki)

‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ by Tracy Chevalier

The novel Girl with the Pearl Earring was written by Tracy Chevalier in 1999. As she says, talking about the inspiration for this novel, the idea of writing such a story came easily:

“I was lying in bed one morning, worrying about what I was going to write next. (Writers are always worrying about that.) A poster of the Vermeer painting Girl With a Pearl Earring hung in my bedroom, as it had done since I was 19 and first discovered the painting. I lay there idly contemplating the girl’s face, and thought suddenly, “I wonder what Vermeer did to her to make her look like that. Now there’s a story worth writing.” Within three days I had the whole story worked out. It was effortless; I could see all the drama and conflict in the look on her face. Vermeer had done my work for me,” declared the author.

There is an interview in our books in which we can read very interesting things, such as how she conducted her research, why she chose Vermeer’s work to write about to which she confesses his work is beautiful and so mysterious. In her official web page, we can also read ” There is so much mystery in each painting, in the women he depicts, so many stories suggested but not told. I wanted to tell one of them.”

Have a look at the page!! You will find a little piece of writing about each painting that appears in the story. There so much to look at!!

http://www.tchevalier.com/index.html

 

Vermeer the Ignored Artist

Vermeer ,as well as his comtemporary Rembrandt, was underestimated but also ignored.Vermeer was modestly successful as a painter/art dealer, well-respected in Delft, but never gained much of a reputation outside. After his death, he was forgotten almost entirely.and it was n the nineteenth century when he was “rediscovered”.Since that moemet on, he has been considered one of the finest painters ever.

I didn’t know too much about Vermeer and the only painting that I had seen was that of ‘The Girl with the Pearl Earing’.Now that I know more about him and have had the choice of appreciating the beauty of some of his masterpieces I wander myself how could such wonderful paintings be sitting there in Delft withouth attracting any kind of attention.

According to which I have read there are several hypothesis :

1. Vermeer had few or no students to spread the word about the prowess of their master.
2. Vermeer’s paintings were mostly “private” paintings, not high-profile public commissions or portraits of important society figures.
3. Maybe not that many people saw them.

The most sad thing is that when Vermeer died people started selling his paintings under other artists’ names in order to get higher prices — though he continued to be recognized and appreciated by a small number of connoisseurs. Finally, in the 1850s Vermeer’s genius began to be more generally recognized and an effort was made to locate paintings incorrectly attributed to other artists.

** Some extracts of this article have been taken from the following webpage: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/#

A short Description of Vermeer’s ‘The Geographer’

Jan Vermeer produced just 35 –36 paintings in his lifetime, but remains the most respected artists of the European tradition. Most of Vermeer’s paintings are serene, luminous interiors with just one or two figures.

In The Geographer , Vermeer presents another individual in an interior. In this case, we have a male figure, which has intense energy in comparison to the contemplative women from other compositions. As we can see, the scholar is bending over the maps in his study. His left hand rests on a book; his right hand holds a compass. The painting accurately details the cartographic objects like the sea chart, globe, dividers, square and a cross-staff used to measure the elevation angle of the sun and stars so, all these objects identify him as a geographer. It seems as if he is distracted by something he sees outside but I think that he is not and that according to his facial expression he is in phase of comtemplation. He may be thinking about all the places he has visited.

It is important to mention that Vermeer is one of the the most outstanding colorist and painter of light of his period. This painting, as is often the case with Vermeer, is primarily based on blue, yellow, and red pigments. The room is flooded with a cool, clear light, despite the many dark shadows. They characterize the composition as well as the auxiliary lines that reinforce the perspective.

Similarities in Vermeer’s paintings

After having watched the documentary on Vermeer’s paintings and the film The Girl with a Pearl Earring, I have noticed that many of this author’s paintings are set in almost the same enclosures: a room that in some cases has a painting in the rear wall and that in all the cases has a window on the left. Something remarkable of the painting I have chosen – The Girl with a Wine Glass - is the stained-glass window since it appears also in another painting, The Glass of Wine. The female figure is holding a level and a bridle and it is supposed to personify Temperantia, or Temperance if you want to call it another way. The level symbolizes good deeds and the bridle symbolizes emotional control. Thus, it is very probable that, together with the staid portrait on the rear wall, it provided some sort of admonitory comments to the protagonists’ lack of self restraint.

Another thing to point out in this painting is the male figure at the bottom of the room. It is one of the very few openly negative figures in the artist’s work. The young man’s degected posture and shadowy treatment have lead critics to believe that may either be a victim of love or simply drunk. This mood and pose are reminiscent of those of the girl in another Vermeer’s paintings – A Maid Asleep.

 

** Some extracts of this article have been taken from the following webpage: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/girl_with_a_wine_glass.html#

ESP

Claire told us that this semestre we will be dealing with the fabulous artist Johannes Vermeer and his paintings.

After having seen a documentary of Johannes Vermeer’s paintings, I have chosen: The young woman with a water pitcher. I find this painting very interesting to work on it.

It was a surprise for all the class to know that all our works in relation to Vermeer are going to be published in a book, so we will try to do our best!