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.

Treatment of Colour in Vermeer’s Paintings

Vermeer is known to have been extremely conscious about the real nature of colour, and about the fact that objects change in different circumstances and under different lights. In the film “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, this sharp consciousness is represented through a conversation between the painter and Griet, where he asks the young maid about the colour of the clouds. Her reaction is similar as ours would have been: “White”. However, she soon realises that the answer is not as straightforward as she had thought, and discovers that the clouds actually reflects the colours of the world that expands beneath them.

“The Little Street” is another example of this for, though red is apparently the predominant colour, we realise that most details contain blue: the cracks on the wall, the pavement, the woodwork of the windows, the tree at the left, etc. Appart from Vermeer’s mastery, this is also a sign of his economic status. Art historias from UCL, quoted in Science Blog (accessed on June 5th), pointed out that lapis lazuli was a very expensive material in the 17th century, and that unlike most painters, Vermeer used it in the representation of materials like wood and chairs. This contrasts with the generalised belief that Vermeer belonged to the lower-middle class.

Richard A. Smith on Girl with a Pitcher of Water

Vermeer is speaking to the main theme of his body of work, which is Temperance, or Moderation based on pure motives. The young woman in the Pitcher painting is prepared to wash herself and has poured the water to the basin for that purpose. The act of purification from the grit and grime of the world would appear to be Vermeer’s assignment to the lady in this work, but her progress is interrupted by what may appear to be, at first sight, thoughtful inactivity. Yet Vermeer leaves clues to his real intent for this painting, by the means of the woman’s physical connection to the symbol of purity–the ewer and basin, but also to the open window. Open casement windows in dutch genre painting have iconographic significance and are meant as a warning to women of the dangers of not paying attention to household matters (minding ones own affairs), and the lures of the outside world to social and moral ills to which she may be attracted. The lady has departed from her original intent, however briefly, and, we may assume, to dwell on innocent household matters to which her new days efforts will be spent addressing or just a pleasant interlude. Vermeer does not leave that interpretation open to the observer. The lady holds the window open, but does not look out to the street. Physically, the open window is behind her, and, as her downcast eyes to the floor are not actively engaged or focused on anything that we can discern, why would we assume that the symbolism of the casement window, being open, is a problem? The answer is not apparent at first, but one troubling observation with regards the lady’s other hand on the pitcher is very revealing about the state of her mind and, symbolically, the moral state of the woman. Vermeer shows and indicates that the absorbed mind of the woman is involved in an intemperate activity when he pictures the lady’s absentmindedness. For, it is not logical that the lady would put down the pitcher in the bowl of the basin after she had filled it! Vermeer cleverly shows the viewer that the woman is not attending to her work as she should.
What, then is she attending to? It is true that her eyes do not betray her, by peering out of the window, but that does not preclude the woman from engaging the world outside with her ears. Is it plausible, then, that Vermeer is addressing her penchant for eavesdropping on her neighbours. After all, isn’t listening a prime activity of the gossip?
Twice, in his ouvre Vermeer used the visual device of the ebony map weight in an identical fashion. In this picture and the Luteplayer, he placed the map weight in close proximity to the crook of the women’s necks. It has the visual effect of slowing down the movement of the viewers eye, as it passes through the space behind their heads. In both cases, it has the effect of freezing their heads in their respective places. The lady with the lute is tuning her lute and listening as she turns a peg on the head of the instrument. Is it not likely that Vermeer has used the same painterly device to portray a woman listening at an open window?

Rcihard A. Smith on Girl with a Pitcher of Water

The Pitcher picture can be read like a secret love-letter. It has the code of symbols of its iconography to tell the tale. The ewer or pitcher and basin are about Purity. Christian art painted the Virtues and this was one. The pitcher and bowl of the Milkmaid has the same meaning, but no other writer will say it, because the meaning of both of these paintings points, not to purity, only, but also to impurity. The Ermine, with it’s black-tipped tail, was for the kings of Europe the symbol of purity, but as is pointed out by by Alcaito in his emblemata, the Romans viewed it as denoting impurity amongst their young women. Vermeer paints a highlighted ermine, I believe on the side of the jewelry box in the Pitcher painting. If it is not an ermine, then he made up for this lack in many of his pictures, with the white fur trim on the yellow jacket! I find it sad and dishonest that the experts (to name them is unecessary, as they are legion) will try, in Vermeer’s case, to side-step his moralizing, and considering only other genre painters guilty of “morality” narratives in their preacher paintings. They would ascribe only sweetness and light to their hero. The truth, for them, is hard to swallow when it goes counter to their admiration for the great artist. Do they defend their previously naive statements before new knowledge was obtained? Some lack of perception would embarass, but truth must be owned to make an expert.

Vermeer and his contemporaries

I have recently found two videos which are well worth having a look at to have a general overview of Vermeer and his contemporaries:

• In Spanish: ArteHistoria, Vermeer el ciudadano de Delft: http://www.artehistoria.jcyl.es/genios/videos/184.htm

This video contains a brief general overview of the context, biography and art of Vermeer and his contemporaries. In addition, this webpage also includes other videos of different paintings of Vermeer as well as other artists.

• In English: Norton Simon Museum, Multimedia The Intimate Interior: Vermeer and His Contemporaries by Anne Woollett: http://www.nortonsimon.org/multimedia/videos/annewoollett.php?video=medium

This video shows a presentation given by Anne Woollet who offers a deeper analysis of the interiors depicted by Johannes Vermeer.

I hope they will be of some help!

The Little Street

If the painting itself is already imbued with a somewhat magic character, the mystery surrounding the history of the real “Little Street” makes it even more special.

Though the scarcity of evidence have led to doubts about whether this street ever existed at all, there is a theory that has been consistently regarded. This claim points Voldersgracht as being the place in which this scene might have taken place, for the gutter that one of the women is standing by suggests that the canal was very close by.

As stated in Essential Vermeer ( http://www.essentialvermeer.com/maps/delft/vermeer’s_neighborhood.html , accessed on June 8 ), the house on the left was the Old Men’s House, and Vermeer decided to paint the street after knowing that it would be demolished to house the headquartes of the Guild of Painters (St. Luke’s Guild)

Woman in blue reading a letter

This painting has been chosen for the “English for Specific Purposes” class by Jurgi Erquicia.

ABOUT THE WORK

“Vermeer’s ‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’ seems so harmonious in color, theme and mood that it is hard to imagine any other compositional solution. Indeed, as in others of his paintings, one has difficulty imagining Vermeer at work, as an artist who had to somehow compose and make tangible a concept he had conceived in his mind. Part of the problem in visualizing Vermeer’s working procedure stems from the lack of available information. No drawings, prints or unfinished paintings-indeed, no records of commissions-offer clues to his intent or aspects of his working process.”

New York Times film review Girl With a Pearl Earring

 

I thought it would be interesting to read a film review of ‘Girl with a Parl Earring’ to see how it was recieved and percieved by the critics. Below is an extract of thefilm review taken from New York Times online:

 

At the start of ”Girl With a Pearl Earring,” Griet (Scarlett Johansson) is shown peeling an onion, an image as metaphor rarely seen outside first-semester filmmaking classes. The determination visible in such an effort communicates Importance Writ Large. And the film, adapted by Olivia Hetreed from Tracy Chevalier’s novel, does have a great subject: the story surrounding an artwork shrouded in mystery and a project that ruins a woman’s reputation yet ensures her a place in history.

This film, which opens today in New York and Los Angeles, is the imagined tale of Griet, a maid who became the muse of Johannes Vermeer and the subject of his painting ”Girl With a Pearl Earring.” Ms. Johansson is photographed so that her skin is as opalescent as her earring, but the movie is opaque. It is an earnest, obvious melodrama with no soul, filled with the longing silences that come after a sigh.

 

Yet the care that has gone into making ”Earring,” a dexterous and absorbing visual re-creation of the lighting and the look that Vermeer achieved in his work, is a tribute to the director Peter Webber’s own group of artisans, the cinematographer Eduardo Serra and the production designer Ben van Os. The gorgeous score, by Alexandre Desplat, brushes in a haunted gloom that gives the picture life where none seems to exist. This is the kind of film that would prompt the movie industry trade papers to say ”technical credits above par.”

Taken from : http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/

My painting pf Vermeer

According to Arthur K. Wheelock, “Vermeer’s ‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’ seems so harmonious in color, theme and mood that it is hard to imagine any other compositional solution. Indeed, as in others of his paintings, one has difficulty imagining Vermeer at work, as an artist who had to somehow compose and make tangible a concept he had conceived in his mind. Part of the problem in visualizing Vermeer’s working procedure stems from the lack of available information. No drawings, prints or unfinished paintings-indeed, no records of commissions-offer clues to his intent or aspects of his working process.”

Taken from: http://www.essentialvermeer.com/catalogue/woman_in_blue_reading_a_letter.html

A young woman sleeping

This work was done by Petaundklau last year.

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) (1656-1657)

SOURCES

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer#Obras

I have to take my time to enter the little key in the lock because of all the things that I am taking with me. I have taken some plates from the dinning room that were left by the lady of the house, a carpet from the hall that I have to wash, several glasses and a mug with wine from the welcome party of the baby. I leave everything on the table of the kitchen before doing the washing up.

I still have my new clothes on; I did not even take off the expensive earrings that the master gave to me in my birthday. It was supposed to be a present but I consider it more a consolation prize. I have worked as a maid in this family for ten years. The house is not very big and that makes it easier but now I am also in charge of the children. The nanny left a couple of years ago and the master did not want to take another maid because of the gossiping of other aristocrats, so I had to take all that burden on me.

I sit down on a leather covered chair. I take my hands into my head and I rub my forehead with my hands in a vain attempt to erase every sign of grief. I do not feel better and I gaze the mug of wine shining in the light that comes from the window. I can take just a sip of wine before I wash the carpet. It will be just to taste the unattainable flavour of happiness. I pour the wine in a glass with golden brim. I approach the glass so slowly that I make a ritual of it. I can see the deep purple drink standing still, so dark that I feel that I am looking into my own soul.

I drink the glass of wine. I look again into the bottle. I do not think that neither the master nor the mistress will miss the wine that was left from the party because yesterday was a very happy day and I could notice that in the master’s breath. It was a welcome party for the last child in the house. It is a lovely little girl. She has bright blue eyes and her skin is as smooth as the touch of a cloud. I like listening to her gurgling in her cot and I sometimes get up at night just to see her sleeping.

I am absorbed by my own thoughts and I have not noticed that I had almost drunk the whole mug of wine. I feel calmer while the wine slips through my throat.  I lay my head in my hand slightly bent to the right while I caress the cashmere like tablecloth. I remember leaving the door opened. In other days I would have closed it but there was nothing to hide now.  I leave myself in Morpheus’ arms.

Memories come to my mind. I can see myself. I was young. It was my first year in the house. My blue eyes were alive and I could look into the daylight without feeling fear.  Even a shy smile could be outlined in my face. I was brought into the house because my father had died and I was the elder of five children, so I had to help my mother earning money for the family. I was quite happy that I could find a job. But that entire dream turned into a nightmare quite soon.

I had noticed that the mistress of the house had changed, she began behaving strangely. She was like a little child, vulnerable and disable. This brought so much sadness and sorrow into the house. The master also changed. But he changed towards me. He began looking at me from the doorframe while I was working or taking care of the children. Several times he touched smoothly my hand in such an inattentive way that it could seem nothing but an accident if it would not have been accompanied by a lewd glance.  I could not understand why he did this and I was not sure whether all that was just part of my imagination.

I got my answer one night.  I was almost asleep in my bedroom next to the kitchen when I heard that someone was approaching the door. The door handle was moving while my pupils were becoming bigger in fear.  I saw a shadow of a man. I could not move, the fear had paralyzed all my muscles as if I was in the middle of the freezing Artic.  He moved closer to my bed. He took off his pants and he pulled out the rough blanket. I wanted to shout, to escape, to run away from there, I wanted to fight the threatening figure but I could just close my eyes. Even my blood was inert and I held my breath to prevent my lungs from being spoiled with the foul air in the room.

This did not end up that night. It was hell coming to earth every night. I was raped during nine years in the eyes of a mad wife and of three little children. There was a time when my blood thickened and I had no tears to wipe, no smile and no brightness in my blue eyes. The girl was my only salvation. Nine months did the whole family keep the secret. It was not difficult to keep it because the mistress did not go out of the house. The pain of those nine years was nothing compared to that of watching my own child in the arms of others.

A noise of breaking glass awakens me alarmed. I see pieces of glass in my hand and blood is flowing from them. So many things come to my mind in a second. I can hear the little girl crying. Oh little child of mine, do not cry for your unhappy mother, it will be better to end up with all this as soon as possible. I slit my wrists with the already broken pieces of glass. I lay again my head in my hand while blood is slipping on my arm. What is done can not be undone

This lines were posted last year by Eider Zorrilla English Philology student.

 

 

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.

 

 

Essay for Claire on The Milkmaid

 

It was just another spring morning for her. Once again, she woke up very early in the morning and walked towards the market in order to buy the fresh milk and the fresh dough. Going to the market every morning was not an easy task for her, as she was a country girl, who had to travel to the big city and made a living. She was used to milk the cow, because she would help his father every single morning back in their farm.

 

She worked as a maid in a wealthy family and although she had been working there for some years, she still missed a lot her humble way of living. She was known around the city as the milkmaid, though her real name was Tanneke.

 

She was provided with food and clothes and had her own room in the house, that was the way in which the wealthy family payed her services at the house. That morning she was wearing the yellow long-sleeved rustic garment with blue stripes on it and the only skirt she had, which was covered with a dark blue apron. As she was still young and not married, she had to wear a white shawl covering her hair.

 

She was tired of working day after day and night after night, pleasing the others and not herself; going to the market, cooking, cleaning, washing, serving, watching after the kids … the list of the tasks never came to an end in that house. There was no time for having a rest; no time was left even to breath. However, she never showed any bad face or gesture. She tried to do her best each time. Whenever she felt exausted, instead of stopping doing things, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes and kept on with her tasks.

 

 She had a dream, a dream she never shared with anybody. She kept it to herself. She had built in her mind her perfect future. She dreamt about going back home with some money in the pocket. Home, her home, her family, her whole life spent at home. Home was for her more than four walls and a bed, it was her people, the most important part of herself. Home was for her beautiful green hills, valleys, dales and pure streams and lakes. Home was for her life. It was nature in its own. Cows, highland cattle, deers, sheeps…that was home.

 

 There was no much light in that room. The sun had just start shining and illuminatin the world. Besides, the window of that room was not a clean window and so, light could hardly find its way in. Nevertheless, she had to prepare the breakfast for the Lady before she woke up. Actually, there was a little hole in one of the pieces of the window, which allowed the entramce of the light to be a bit easier. That ray directly illuminated her face, letting her see well.

 

By that time in the morning she had already gone to the market so she had already shaped the bread, cooked it in the old woodden oven and put it in different baskets. She had a look to the bread and thought it was the best bread she had ever cooked. It was perfect: not too burnt but with that tempting colour and great smell, which invited her to eat a piece. She began pouring the milk into the cup. Inspite of being tired, exausted, she poured the milk in a very careful way, as if it was the most fragile thing in the world. There was no drop of milk spread in the table; her apron was still clean, which she tried to keep that way because she had no other apron.

 

Although she was tired and bored of doing the same day after day, she tried to it the best she could. However, you could notice her sadness in her face. You could see trhough her eyes her resignation.

 

Millions of ideas would drift in her mind. She spent most of the day thinking, missing, dreaming about her home in the country. She would remember the green valleys with the seeps and the cows, the almost blue lakes surrounded by beautiful pink, yellow and white wild flowers, the singing of the birds and the fly of tens of butterflies around the trees and the grass. She remembered the pure white winters, in which almost everything was frozzen and white. Lakes and rivers were as strong as stones, with no flood of water through them. There were not wild colourful flowers at the shore of the lake, neither green grass in the slope of the hill. Those lively butterflies would have hidden in winter time, and birds would not sing as loud and happy as in summer time. She remembered the freezing cold day and nights, especially whenever she had to do any task outside the house.

 

That morning, once again, she would think about all those things, and would pour the milk just wondering herself how green valleys would be or how blue lakes and streams would be back at home. The work seemed to be easier while dreaming about being there again. Her departure was nearer than ever, though she did not know anything about it. She thought she had to spend at least a couple of years more there to be able to go back home.

 

Nevertheless, the mistress of the house did not need her services more. Tanneke had been a very good maid for many years, but was getting old. The mistress needed young maids, full of vitality. So, that same morning, after pouring the milk, putting the bread in the basket and bringing them to her mistress, she was told the great news. She was going back! Going back home! She thought full of happiness. She went downstairs jumping enthusiastically, where she packed her few things in an old bag. Her dream had made true.

Elizabeth Mansfield

This author, ELizabeth Mansfield, mentioned the painting I chose, “Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window” in her book “Art, history and its institutions”, as we can see in this picture:

This information is given to us by Google. The rights are reserved, but I wanted to show you how this painting is also mentioned not only on the Web but also in different books.

In Google Books. Last time retrieved 17 May 2009, from GoogleBooks .

Wikipedia and “Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window”.

What Wikipedia says about this painting:

Girl reading a Letter at an Open Window is a painting finished in 1657 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie of Dresden.

The picture was acquired in 1724 by August III, elector of Saxony, together with a number of other paintings bought in Paris. The seller threw in the picture as a present, to sweeten the deal. It was then attributed to Rembrandt, and the ascription was subsequently weakened to “manner” or “school of”. In 1783, it was engraved as a work by Govaert Flinck. The name “Van der Meer from Delft” occurred for the first time in a catalog dating from 1806, to be changed back to Flinck in 1817. From 1826 to 1860, the appellation was altered to Pieter de Hooch. It is only since 1862 that the correct identification obtains. The only Dutch provenance that could possibly apply is the sale Pieter van der Lip, Amsterdam, 1712, no. 22, “A Woman Reading in a Room, by van der Meer of Delft fl 110″. Unfortunately, the text is not specific enough to distinguish it from the one at the Rijksmuseum, Woman in Blue Reading a Letter.

The above underlines the difficulties inherent to the establishment of Vermeer’s catalog. Not a single work can be traced back to the painter’s studio, nor are there any letters or contracts extant. The task of attribution rests squarely upon the shoulders of the individual critic, which explains the multiplicity of divergent opinions. In this painting, a young woman stands in the center of the composition, facing in profile an open window to the left. In the foreground is a table covered with the same Oriental rug encountered in the Woman Asleep. On it is the identical Delft plate with fruit. The window reflects the girl’s features, while to the right the large green curtain forms a deceptive frame. She is precisely silhouetted against a bare wall that reflects the light and envelops her in its luminosity.

We are here confronted with one of the salient aspects of Vermeer’s sensibility and originality. It is the stillness that stands out, the inner absorption, the remoteness from the outer world. She concentrates entirely upon the letter, holding it firmly and tautly, while she absorbs its content with utmost attention.

In the technique, the artist avows again Rembrandtesque derivation. He paints in small fatty dabs to model the forms, and obtains the desired effects by means of impasto highlights opposed to the deeper tonalities – just as the master from Leyden was wont to do. The painting is relatively large, and the smallness of the figure as opposed to its surroundings stresses immateriality and depersonalization. Vermeer considerably changed the composition in the course of execution.

Much has been written about the trompe-l’oeil effect of the curtain. It is a pictorial artifice used by many other Dutch masters and in keeping with an old European tradition. Rembrandt, Gerard Dou, Nicolaes Maes, and many still-life and even landscape painters made use of such curtains as a means of simulating effects that now seem theatrical. The light background can be found in many paintings by Carel Fabritius, the Goldfinch from 1654 at the Mauritshuis in The Hague being the most famous example.[1]

The artist Tom Hunter borrowed the composition for his award-winning photograph of a squatter, Woman Reading a Possession Order.

Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, In Wikipedia. Last time retrieved May 17, 2009, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_reading_a_Letter_at_an_Open_Window

Girl With a Pitcher of Water

This tranquil scene, notable for the simplicity of the forms which define the composition and the relationship between the different shades of red, blue and ochre, presents an idealized vision of feminine virtue and is an excellent example of Vermeer’s exquisite sensitivity in the observation of reality.

From the beginning of the 1660s when this work was produced, Vermeer’s interiors became simpler, and focused less on the construction of the perspective and more on the representation of light, possibly under the influence of Leiden artists such as Metsu and Van Mieris. In contrast to these artists and to his own earlier work, in the 1660s Vermeer painted scenes which do not appear to depict any specific event or activity nor do they offer dues as to what has just happened or is about to happen.

Both the woman’s clothing and the Persian carpet on the table as well as the other carefully arranged objects in the scene identify her as a member of the upper classes, depicted here in a moment of repose. Vermeer’s mastery lies in the way he makes the formal structure of the work correspond to the serenity of the subject matter, allowing the spectator to discover the harmony and beauty beneath the chance events of everyday existence. To achieve this, the details are extremely important, such as the cadence created by the lines of the woman’s arms and her amiable expression which contribute to the warmth and sensation of restraint which the scene conveys. The artist’s care in the design of the composition led him to make changes (right above) as he worked on it beneath her right elbow are traces of a chair, which Vermeer subsequently decided to move back to the wall behind the table. We also know that the map of the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands initially hung closer to the window.

The light is another key element in this work. With great subtlety Vermeer represents the way the light that bathes the scene falls on the metallic objects or the interior frame of the window, while the luminosity of the end wall gives unity to the composition.

It is likely that for a 17th-century viewer, used to looking at religious scenes in which the ewer was an allusion to the Virgin’s purity, the presence of such an object in the present work implies the same connotations of innocence and purity.

The following resources were used for this interactive research:

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/pitcher.html

Girl With a Pitcher of Water

With a few exceptions - The Music Lesson being the most obvious – Vermeer in the early 1660s moved away from the type of interior that he, De Hooch, and other painters (such as Ludolf de Jongh in Rotterdam) had painted in the period about 1657-6, and adopted an approach that in some respects was closer to that of the Leiden artists Metsu and Frans van Mieris. The preoccupation with linear perspective and geometric order diminished in favor of simpler compositions, in which the view is usually brought in closer, only one figure is depicted, and the behavior of light becomes the dominant aesthetic concern.

The description of light on surfaces such as fine materials, metal, and glass had already engaged Vermeer in The Letter Reader,  The Milkmaid, and other paintings of about 1657-58, partly in response to Leiden artists. De Hooch’s style of the late 1650s  offered a different model in that space and light are more broadly rendered, and details are textures generalized. A similar approach is found in the oeuvres of Carel Fabritius and Emanuel de Witte, and from the beginning Vermeer was also  predisposed to an optical rather than a tactile manner. His style of the 1660s is a distinctive synthesis of qualities absorbed from various sources in a highly selective way. Light, broad areas of shadow, and pregnant spaces reveal close observation and a survey of current artistic alternatives. Qualities that might have been admired in the same sources-for example, the precise drawing that commonly accompanies an enthusiasm for artificial perspective (as in De Man’s work) and the dwelling upon surface incident for which Gerard Dou was known-were passed over by Vermeer. Pieter Teding van Berkhout’s appreciation of perspective in Vermeer, expressed in 1669 would have been appropriate for paintings like The Glass of Wine and The Music Lesson, but the “most curious aspect” of the artist’s work after the early 1660s was his consistent description of forms and space in terms of light and color values despite the importance of perspective in his work.

These considerations bear upon the placement of the Marquand canvas in Vermeer’s oeuvre. Recently it was dated to about 1664-65 and interpreted as a mature instance of “Neo-platonic” composition, something of which no other Dutch artist has been accused. Lawrence Gowing more plausibly suggested a date of about 1661-62 and with a surprising but incisive choice of words described the painting as “the most primitive of its type,” which he finds in more mature form in Woman in Blue Reading a Letter and other works that he dates to about 1662-64 and groups together as “pearl pictures” (in honor of Woman with a Pearl Necklace).

The painting’s wonderful sense of order and harmony was achieved by restricting the color scheme mostly to whites and values of the three primaries, by framing the conical figure with rectangular shapes, and by suspending animation through an intense study of light effects. In general terms, the design is a reduction of the De Hooch-like compositions found in the paintings in Berlin, Brunswick, and the Frick Collection, where in each case a standing man hovers over a seated woman; the figures and furniture form pyramids in a Cartesian realm. The admirable but rather deliberate dovetailing of motifs (in The Glass of Wine for example, the ‘bench is slotted between the wall and table like a strip of marquetry) continues in the present picture: the woman’s left arm extends the contours of the pitcher; the map’s wood bar tucks into the angle of her shoulder and head (the map originally extended much farther to the left, so that the head was framed in a corner); and the “negative” shapes within and around the contours of the figure are all given their proper visual weight (which required removing a chair from the corner). The pose of the figure and placement of the table have a noble ancestry descending from Van Miereveld’s state portraits to Rembrandt’s Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (the cavalier contemplating a young woman in The Glass of Wine has some affinity with Rembrandt’s philosopher). Of course, Vermeer did not derive ideas from these sources but simply shared with them a high regard for the classical tradition.

The painting’s design exquisitely suits its subject, which is an idealized view of feminine beauty and virtue. Dou painted pictures of old women, their heads less elegantly covered, watering plants outside of windows, and also pictures of an attractive young woman opening a window or pushing a curtain aside. Vermeer may have conflated two such images or derived his version from a Leiden model now unknown. That the artist avoids conventional narrative has been stressed by recent writers. However, a contemporary viewer would have recognized the head and shoulder coverings, the silver-gilt basin and pitcher (with which one would not normally water plants), and the jewelry box as the accoutrements of a well-to-do city woman’s toilette. That she opens or looks out the window does not disturb, indeed enhances, the sense of unself-conscious activity. Vermeer represents but a moment of private life, and a patrician ideal.

The following resources were used for this interactive research:

http://www.essentialvermeer.com/cat_about/pitcher.html

Girl With a Pitcher of Water

Vermeer focused many of his scenes on a female figure lost in thought while in the midst of a daily activity. He discovered in such quiet moments of contemplation, when one gazes outward but looks within, a window into an individual’s spiritual nature. Here, the woman’s reverie occurs as she stands near the corner of a room, holding the frame of a leaded-glass window in one hand and a water pitcher in the other.

 

The following resources were used for this interactive research:

http://www.mystudios.com/vermeer/17/vermeer-pitcher-review.html

Griet

I find the fictional character of Griet in Tracy Chevalier’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ fascinating. It seems as though because so little is known about the origins of the painting and the identity of the girl, the world has been free to speculate and therefore to create this moving story. As Chevalier’s story goes, Griet is a servant girl forced into working for Vermeer’s household through her impoverished state. She find a role there, collecting the meat from the butcher, doing the laundry, cleaning the house. However as time goes on she becomes part of Vermeer’s world, and almost by accident, his work. The novel describes the deep intimacy and tension shared between the artist and Griet, despite there being no historical evidence that Vermeer and his wife were unhappily married. Whatever the real circumstances were seem irrelevant however, as a work of fiction, and then of course, a film have been crafted out of a painting which left itself open to interpretation. Below is an exact from the book that I wanted to share:

‘What do you want sir?’ I asked, sitting. I was puzzled – we ever sat together. I shivered, although I was not cold.

‘Don’t talk.’ He opened a shutter so that the light fell directly on my face. ‘Look out the window.’ He sat down in his chair by the easel.

I gazed at the New Church tower and swollowed. I could feel my jaw tightening and my eyes widening.

‘Now look at me.’

I turned my head and looked at him over my left shoulder.

His eyes locked with mine. I could think of nothing except how their grey was like the inside of an oyster shell.

He seemed to be waiting for something. My face began to strain with the fear that I was not giving him what he wanted.

‘Griet,’ he said softly. It was all he had to say. My eyes filled with tears I did not shed. I knew now.

‘Yes. Don’t move.’

He was going to paint me.

Extract taken from : Chevalier, Tracy. Girl With A Pearl Earring (Harper Collins, GB 1999) p.180

Woman with a Pearl Necklace

    Some of the most beautiful things in the painting are the small details. First, the light which is coming from the chairs in its iron pieces is very beautiful and they were painted well to a degree we feel that we are looking to a real chair and not one in a painting. Second, the shadows of the chair behind the table and of the curtains of the window are simple and defined in their places and positions to the chair and the curtains to a degree that they carry to the viewer the feelings of the hot sun. Also, the light under the table is a very simple detail and a person may think why Vermeer painted it though the beauty of the painting would not have been destroyed if he did not, but this proves that Vermeer is one of the best painters in his time, because he took care of the very simple and small details in each of his painting and painted them very well. Moreover, Vermeer had a unique sense when it came to fabric, for instance, the piece of cloth on the table is very beautiful and a viewer can notice the touch of it and the reflection of light on it is used to show the touch of it.  Also, the hands of the women in the painting show the tender and gentle way in which the lady holds the necklace. All the simple details in the painting had participated in giving life to the painting.