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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.
Vermeer grew up in Delft, Holland. He was admitted to
the painters’ guild in 1653, and was thereafter allowed
to sell his art. He also worked as an art dealer to
supplement his income and support his wife and 11
children. WWI resulted in Vermeer losing his business.
Soon after, he died of a stroke at the age of 42,
leaving his family bankrupt. Vermeer’s paintings were
then largely forgotten for nearly 200 years, until 1858
when a French critic began to write admiringly about
Vermeer’s work.
In The Geographer (left), Vermeer presents another
individual in an interior. This male figure, has intense
energy in comparison to the contemplative women from
other compositions. The flow of light from left to right
brings alive the canvas. The flow is accentuated
compositionally by the massing of objects on the left.
The light spills into the open area on the right,
casting shadows. Vermeer adjusted his figure to provide
a more active stance. A detailed study canvas revealed
that the geographer had originally looked down with his
dividers also pointed down.
He adjusted the composition and aligned man’s face and
the dividers with the flow of light. The folds of the
robe serve to show an activate figure, who is dynamic.
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. It is probable that Vermeer’s
sophisticated presentation of these instruments was due
to his association with scientist Anthony Van
Leeuwenhoek.
Although there is no documentary proof linking the two,
they were both born in Delft in the same year. And the
portrait of Leeuwenhoek closely resembles the figure in
Vermeer’s geographer, it is possible that Leewenhoek
served as the model.
He meticulously constructed interiors with just one or
two figures - usually women. This genre of paintings
show the principal figure is invariably engaged in some
everyday activity. Often the light enters Vermeer’s
paintings from a window. He was a master at depicting
the way light illuminates objects and in the rendering
the details of materials. “For Vermeer, painting meant
more than conveying abstract principles in a realistic
form. Its very essence was built on the conviction that
an artist needed a thorough understanding of the laws of
natur nature to create a convincing illusion of reality.
Such is the seductive beauty of his paintings that their
subtle artifice often goes unnoticed.” Vermeer succeeded
to give the image a sense of life through the use of
light that illuminates the figures and objects in the
room.
Vermeer may have made use of a camera obscura (literally
“dark room”) to help him conceive, although not paint,
the composition. A precursor of the modern camera, it
was a box with a small hole through which rays of light
passed to form an inverted image on a surface opposite
the hole. Images recorded with a camera obscura often
show discrepancies in scale similar to those found in
this painting, and some areas in clearer focus than
others. Vermeer conveyed this optical effect by varying
his painting technique. The apparent realism of
Vermeer’s scene is a quality seventeenth-century Dutch
artists often strove to achieve. It was the notion that
a painting should deceive the eye with its illusionism
dates back to antiquity. Vermeer modified and idealized
the reality to achieve a sense of permanence and
timelessness.
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