The Guitar Player ( Characteristics)

- Artist: Johannes Vermeer

- Year: c. 1667

- Type: Oil on canvas

- Dimensions: 53 x 46.3cm

• Brushstrokes became freer and more expressive than in his earlier works:
  

– He emphasized patterns of color rather than textures.

-The face also is treated differently.  Its expression is outward and not self-contained.

• His composition away from the center of the painting:

- The girl is placed so far to the left that her arm is cut by the edge.

– Light falls to the left and a landscape hangs behind the girl on the back wall.

– The off-center composition is further emphasized by the direction of the girl’s glance.

The Guitar Vs. the Lute

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   – The guitar was just coming into vogue in the late seventeenth century as a popular instrument for solo accompaniment. —

 

   - The music was created, more audacious than the lute, in large part because its production line with a resonance that the lute was not possible. —

 

   - Also in that time the music was very sofisticated and enjoyed by the purity of their sounds. —

 

   – The brilliant character and direct guitar offered us over the world of modern music represented, in contrast to the traditional conservative covered with lute.

who was the model ?

Study of a Young Woman / Johannes Vermeer

-—Johannes Vermeer The yellow-jacketed girl (left) playing the guitar or cittern in the Kenwood picture also has the characteristic jaw formation of the Wrightsman portrait (right).

The Guitar Player / Johannes Vermeer

 

-—Assuming the date assigned to that picture (1671-1672) is about right, it could represent Maria (Vermeer’s youngest daughter) at the age of seventeen or eighteen.

 

-—Elisabeth, born about 1657, is a less likely candidate since she was probably less than fifteen years old at the time the Kenwood picture was painted.