Essential Vermeer

Booklet on Vermeer's Milkmaid

Vermeer: The Milkmaid
by Walter Liedtke

This 36-page catalogue of the MET exhibition Vermeer’s Masterpiece,The Milkmaiddiscusses the painting’s style, meaning, place within Vermeer’s oeuvre, its first owner and later history. The author reveals that a long tradition of amorous milkmaids and kitchen maids in Netherlandish art is continued here with such subtle understatement that the artist’s intentions have been misunderstood for generations. The Metropolitan’s own five paintings by Vermeer and seven other Dutch pictures in the collection are also included in the exhibition and discussed in this generously illustrated publication.

click here to buy at the MET bookshop.

VERMEER'S "Milkmaid" Travels TO New York

Vermeer’s Masterpiece,”The Milkmaid”
Sept. 10 - Nov. 29, 2009
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Organized to honor the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s historic voyage to New York from Amsterdam, the show, Sept. 10 through Nov. 29, 2009 will focus on old masters who, like Vermeer, were active in the period of exploration, trade and artistic flowering that occurred during the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century.

N.Y. painting exhibition of Essential Vermeer author, Jonathan janson

Watercolors from Suberbia
Jonathan Janson
October 24 – November 28, 2009
(opening October 24 at 3-5 p.m)
O. K. Harris Works of Art
383 West Broadway, New York, N. Y.

artist’s statement:
It has always amazed me how contemporary American painters remain so impervious to their own landscape: the place where they work, eat, play, commerce, travel and, I would suppose, occasionally draw inspiration.

Perhaps because I have lived largely abroad, but each time I return the the American landscape never fails to surprise. The subtly new cars, measured parking lots, malls, logos and highway architecture beg to be painted.

Recently, more than the factories and highways, in themselves fairly heroic, I have been drawn to the simple, low lines of suburban dwellings, many with an unmanned car parked on a cement driveway. Inside every house, secrets I will never know. The vision I have is of a quite, disturbing beauty of the mind and soul where strong color, which appeals to the eye, seems superfluous.

My show (14 watercolors) comprises a sequence of suburban watercolors in extreme weather conditions. It rains, snows and gets seriously dark in two different places; the Florida Space Cost where I spent a typical American adolescence and Seattle, where I now have family connections.

link to O. K. Harris Works of Art:
http://www.okharris.com/

link to home page of Jonathan Janson’s personal website:
http://www.jonathanjanson.com/

VERMEER'S "Love Letter " Travels TO Paris

The Dutch Golden Age: From Rembrandt to Vermeer
October 7, 2009 – February 7, 2010
Pinacothèque de Paris

The Pinacothèque de Paris will host an exhibition will put on an outstanding Dutch works of art, an ensemble of over one hundred and thirty pieces, including about sixty paintings, thirty graphic works, ten etchings as well as ten objects to give an ample representation of carved ivories, tapestries, china, wooden miniatures, silverware, glassworks and furnishings.

Vermeer’s late little Love Letter, will be on display.

Upcoming Vermeer Catalogue

Vermeer: The Complete Paintings
by Walter Liedtke
October 29, 2008

Since his rediscovery in the later half of the 19th century, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) has been one of the most admired and influential European painters. His extremely private life, his supposed use of a camera obscura, and the fact that his teacher remains unidentified have, until recently, encouraged a view of the “Sphinx of Delft” as an isolated genius shrouded in an air of mystery. Walter Liedtke’s new monograph reveals Vermeer’s life to be well-documented and places his work in the context of the Delft school and of Delft society as a whole. Vermeer’s many admirers will relish Liedtke’s exploration of subtleties of meaning and refinements of technique and style. Alongside the most historical approach to Vermeer to date, the annotated color catalogue of Vermeer’s complete paintings reveals a master whose rare sensibility may be described but not explained.

(available at
Lulu.com)

Vermeer-related publication

How to Paint Your Own Vermeer: Recapturing Materials and Methods of a Seventeenth-Century Master
(289 page)
by Jonathan Janson

Which materials and techniques did Johannes Vermeer use to create his masterpieces? Is it still possible to emulate those methods today? Contemporary American painter Jonathan Janson offers straightforward, practical advice on how to reproduce Vermeer's day-to-day working procedures as closely as possible in your own studio. Detailed explanations document each and every step, from the stretching of the canvas to the three-step method used by Vermeer and his contemporaries including indispensable historical and theoretical background regarding the art and craft of Northern seventeenth-century painters.

In the first part, Vermeer's palette, drawing, pigments, brushwork, mediums, glazing, grounds are thoroughly analyzed as they are gradually encountered during the painting process The second part contains insights into crucial stylistic components which, together, make a Vermeer a Vermeer, such as color, composition, camera obscura vision and perspective.