Essential Vermeer

Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in the United States in 2013

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis (35 works)
de Young - San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts
San Francisco
Jan 26 - June 2, 2013

Girl with a Pearl Earring: Dutch Paintings from the Mauritshuis (35 works)
High Museum of Art
Atlanta
June 22 - Sept. 29, 2013

Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis
(10 works)
Frick Collection
New York
Oct. 22, 2013 - Jan 12, 2014

press release:
Masterpieces from the Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis will be exhibited at three museums in the United States from January 2013 to January 2014. The Mauritshuis has agreed to send more than thirty works to the de Young/Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta; the tour will finish with a smaller selection at The Frick Collection in New York. Among the paintings going on tour are the famous Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer and The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, neither of which will have been seen by American audiences in ten years. Furthermore, this is the first occasion since the mid-1980s that a substantial group of works from the Mauritshuis has come to the United States. The decision to organize a major international travelling exhibition of a select group of paintings from the museum’s rich collection was prompted by the large-scale renovations to its premises, which will be finished in 2014.

Vermeer’s Late Young Woman Seated at a Virginalexhibited in Oxford

Ashmolean Museum of Art, Oxford
Jan. 23 - Sept., 2012

http://www.ashmolean.org/news/?id=171

Vermeer’s Early Christ in the House of Martha andMary to be exhibited in Italy

Da Vermeer a Kandinsky. Capolavori dai musei del mondo a Rimini
Jan. 21 - June 3, 2012

Castel Sismondo
Piazza Malatesta
47900 Rimini, Italy

http://www.lineadombra.it/da-vermeer-a-kandinsky/la-mostra

Vermeer’s Guitar Player to be exhibited at the
National Gallery in 2012

With the closure of the Kenwood House for urgent restoration in 2012, the museum was posed with the dilemma of what to do with their masterpieces. The Kenwood has just announced that Vermeer’s Guitar Player will be displayed at the National Gallery in London. The exquisite work, never before relined, will also be examined by the National Gallery's conservation department. Keeping it in storage was ruled out because it was the most costly alternative. he exact dates and location of the picture will be announced in early 2012.

Vermeer's Girl with a Glass of Wine on exhibition in Kassel

Light Structure - The Light in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer
18 November 2011 - 26 February 2012
Museum Hessen Kassel

Seventy superb works from the Baroque age of painting will be displayed in the upcoming exhibition Light structure: The Light in the Age of Rembrandt and Vermeer, in William Castle Museum in Kassel. The exhibition will address one of the most notable aspects of European painting: the translation of light in painting. Attempts on the part of painters to render the myriad effects of light with paint were paralleled by intense scientific research on light.

In cooperation with the Berlin research group  Historical Light Structure (http://www.lichtgefuege.de/index.html)   the exhibition examines the different aspects of light painting in the 17th century on the basis of paintings, graphics and optical devices, also in view of the contemporary scientific treatises. The starting point is the art of the 15th and 16 Century and the fundamental innovations of Caravaggio. North of the Alps have been taken including those of Utrecht artists like Gerard van Honthorst and developed.

Different areas of the exhibition are dedicated to the particular diversity and range of Dutch paintings of light, including day light, nocturnal landscapes, interior and portrait paintings. Vermeer’s Girl with a Glass of Wine will be one of the principal works of the exhibition.

museum website (German only): http://www.museum-kassel.de/index_navi.php?parent=5367

Vermeer Exhibition Catalogue

Vermeer’s Women: Secrets and Silence
by Marjorie E. Wieseman, Mr. Wayne Franits & H. Perry Chapman
2011
224 pages, Yale University Press

purchase exhibition catalogue from Fitzwilliam Museum online shop

product description:

Focusing on the extraordinary Lacemaker from the Musée du Louvre, this beautiful book investigates the subtle and enigmatic paintings by Johannes Vermeer that celebrate the intimacy of the Dutch household. Moments frozen in paint that reveal young women sewing, reading or playing musical instruments, captured in Vermeer’s uniquely luminous style, recreate a silent and often mysterious domestic realm, closed to the outside world, and inhabited almost exclusively by women and children.

Three internationally recognized experts in the field explain why women engaged in mundane domestic tasks, or in pleasurable pastimes such as music making, writing letters, or adjusting their toilette, comprise some of the most popular Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century. Among the most intriguing of these compositions are those that consciously avoid any engagement with the viewer. Rather than acknowledging our presence, figures avert their gazes or turn their backs upon us; they stare moodily into space or focus intently on the activities at hand. In viewing these paintings, we have the impression that we have stumbled upon a private world kept hidden from casual regard.

Vermeer's Lady Writing joins the Woman in Blue reading a letter in trip to Japan

Other than the previously announced (see entry below for details) world premiere of Vermeer's Woman in Blue Reading a Letter after its restoration, Lady Writing and the Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid will be a part of the exhibition Communication: Visualizing Human Connection in the Age of Vermeer in Japan.

exhibition website: http://vermeer-message.com/

The Bunkamura Museum of Art, Tokyo:    23 Dec – 14 March 2012

Multi-media Vermeer Catalogue

The Interactive Vermeer Catalogue
html-based interactive catalogue for all browsers
Jonathan Janson (author and webmaster of Essential Vermeer)

THE COMPLETE INTERACTIVE VERMEER CATALOGUE offers both enthusiastic new-comers and seasoned art historians the chance to delve into Vermeer's paintings as never before. Through an innovative system of image mapping, theme boxes and the familiar internet browser navigational format, each of the artist's 37 surviving paintings can be effortlessly explored according to the particular interests of the individual navigator.

(available at
Lulu.com)

Vermeer-related publication

How to Paint Your Own Vermeer: Recapturing Materials and Methods of a Seventeenth-Century Master

by Jonathan Janson

2006
(289 page)

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.