First Steps: Getting Started with Vermeer

In this small book, each reproduction is uniformly sharp and color balance is adequate. It also contains many illuminating works of art by Vermeer's contemporaries which help capture the spirit of mid 17th c. Delft as well as some excellent details of Vermeer's works. Also included is a catalogue of Vermeer's paintings in the back of the book where each picture is reproduced in color, four to a page. The chronological order stimulates comparison and facilitates the understanding Vermeer's artistic evolution.

The text focuses on life in Vermeer’s native city, Delft, the prosperous Dutch seaport in Vermeer’s time, a bustling world of merchants, sea traders, and artists.

The reproductions in Arthur Wheelock's book are significantly larger than those the other two books in this section and all are finely focused allowing the observations  of fine detail. While the colors  of some of the paintings are very near the originals, a few are unacceptable according to modern standards.

Arthur Wheelock is one of the most prolific writers on Vermeer's art. His views are balanced but always revealing.  Perhaps the introduction to Vermeer's life and times could have been more detailed. Each painting is accompanied with a very brief comment.

The medium-sized reproductions of each painting are well-focused and there are some extremely interesting details but unfortunately a general yellowish "gallery tone" cast over most. Frequently, those who have the fortune of observing a Vermeer direrctly are surprised by their brilliant color scheme and overall cool tone, unlike most reproductions of the past. Bailey does a good job of summing up the bare facts of Vermeer's art and life in a few pages. Each painting is accompanied by a brief comment.

In Vermeer: A View of Delft,  Anthony Bailey presents an intriguing portrait of Vermeer's life and character, long lost in history. Bailey re-creates the atmosphere of the times, introduces Vermeer's colleagues, and portrays his domestic life in vibrant detail; he also sheds light on the science and artistry behind the glorious, almost mystical, paintings. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, Vermeer will stand as the classic work on Vermeer for years to come.

This book is not only a fascinating biography of one of the greatest painters of the seventeenth century but also a social history of the colorful extended family to which he belonged and of the town life of the period. It explores a series of distinct worlds: Delft's Small-Cattle Market, where Vermeer's paternal family settled early in the century; the milieu of shady businessmen in Amsterdam that recruited Vermeer's grandfather to counterfeit coins; the artists, military contractors, and Protestant burghers who frequented the inn of Vermeer's father in Delft's Great Market Square; and the quiet, distinguished "Papists Corner" in which Vermeer, after marrying into a high-born Catholic family, retired to practice his art, while retaining ties with wealthy Protestant patrons. The relationship of Vermeer to his principal patron is one of many original discoveries in the book. No detail of Vermeer's life is overlooked.

"[With Montias] the past is hard put to hide what were in all truth its secrets.... One will read Vermeer and His Milieu several times, as [Montias] has read the archives; he is an indispensable companion for anyone who likes the seventeenth century."

--Lawrence Gowing, The [London] Times Literary Supplement

This surely ranks as one of the most profound interpretations of a painter ever written. Gowing (himself a painter) reveals to us the mysterious relationship between Vermeer's innermost nature and the creation of his masterpieces. It can be read and re-read many times over. Absolutely essential: a masterpiece in its own right.

Edward Snow's A Study of Vermeer, first published in 1979, starts from a single premise: that we respond so intensely to Vermeer because his paintings reach so deeply into our lives. Our desire for images, the distances that separate us, the validations we seek from the still world, the traces of ghostliness in our own human presence. These, the book proposes, are Vermeer's themes, which he pursues with a realism always in touch with the uncanny. His discussions of Vermeer's paintings are conducted in a language of patient observation, and they involve the reader in an experience of deepening relation and ongoing visual discovery. Extremely enlightening.

A lavishly illustrated exhibition catalogue dedicated to Vermeer and held at the National Gallery, Washington D.C. and the Mauritshuis, The Hague in 1995. Up-to-date analysis of the technique, artistry, and history of the painter's work. It contains many original insights and recent discoveries regarding his pictorial technique and use of single-point perspective. Each of the 21 paintings that were in the exhibition are analyzed thoroughly by Arthur Wheelock, one of the most knowledgeable Vermeer specialists.

This book is a collection of writings on aspects of painting in Delft during the period 1650–1675. Walter Liedtke, highly respected curator and scholar of Dutch and Flemish art, discusses at length the work of four artists: Carel Fabritius, Gerard Houckgeest, Pieter de Hooch, and Johannes Vermeer. Liedtke considers recent interpretations and research on these artists' works, exploring in particular the relationship between style and observation in their paintings.

The appealing genre paintings of great seventeenth-century Dutch artists - Vermeer, Steen, de Hooch, Dou and others - have long enjoyed tremendous popularity. This comprehensive book explores the evolution of genre painting throughout the Dutch Golden Age, beginning in the early 1600s and continuing through the opening years of the next century. Wayne Franits, a well-known scholar of Dutch genre painting, offers a wealth of information about these works as well as about seventeenth-century Dutch culture, its predilections and its prejudices. The author approaches genre paintings from a variety of perspectives, examining their reception among contemporary audiences and setting the works in their political, cultural and economic contexts.

Both the choice and quality of the illustrations are extraordinary. Anyone even vaguely interested in Dutch genre painting (scenes of daily life) will find this volume enlightening.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, Ruisdael, Cuyp, de Witte, van Goyen, van de Velde, Saenredam, and de Hooch are just some of the painters whose works document the uniqueness, vitality and genius of seventeenth-century Dutch painting. It was an age of discovery of the natural world and of the everyday world. There was a new humanization of art and a rich and varied range of subject matter in Dutch painting of this period.

Madlyn Kahr describes and interprets this fascinating period as a whole and the different artists and their most notable works, providing a fresh appraisal and understanding.