Essential Vermeer

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.

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.

Exclusive Essential Vermeer Interview

Jonathan Lopez
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren
March 15, 2009

Take a look behind the scenes of the most fascinating study of the most fascinating art forger of all timesin an exclusive interview.

Temporary exhibition of a Vermeer Painting

Woman Holding a Balance travels to Amsterdam.
11 March - 1 June 2009
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Washington National Gallery of Art will lend its Woman Holding a Balance to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The masterpiece will be displayed next to other superb works by Vermeer in the collection of the Rijksmuseum.

essential vermeer website addition

Traditional Music in the Time of Vermeer
by Adelheid Rech
Feb. 9, 2009

Perhaps too often the sublime order and technical perfection of the Vermeer's compositions would charm us into forgetting that Vermeer was brought up in a tavern run by his no-frills, hard-working father. Dutch taverns were places where brawls, business deals, cursing, and serious drinking went on and a knife was pulled every now and then - (as the saying goes "one hundred Dutchmen, one hundred knives").

But taverns were also a place of harmless entertainment and joyful congregate with plenty of music. Living in a tavern and growing up in the streets Vermeer experienced a big slice of his life that never makes its way into his paintings, a life of popular religious and secular festivities, riotous gatherings, joyous marriages and solemn processions that marked the passage of the year each with its own music. No, not the music you would expect to issue from any of Vermeer's dreamlike compositions, but simple, infectious melodies, true "hits" of the moment, These tunes charmed lovers, delighted children and made the grueling toil of daily life a bit more bearable.

This multi-part study explores hurdy-gurdys, shawms and rommelpots and other instruments you most likely have never heard of. Get closer to Vermeer's life, get closer to his art.

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.

Vermeer-related Publication

The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren
by Jonathan Lopez
2008

Best remembered for selling a fake Vermeer to Hermann Goering during the Second World War, Han van Meegeren never admitted to creating any fakes dating from before 1937--but there have always been rumors suggesting that his career actually began much earlier than that. Drawing upon three years of archival research conducted in five nations and interviews with the descendants of Van Meegeren’s partners in crime, Jonathan Lopez reveals that Van Meegeren worked virtually his entire adult life turning out bogus old masters for a ring of art-world intriguers operating out of London and Berlin. Major dealers like Sir Joseph Duveen were stung by these forgeries, as was the great Pittsburgh banker Andrew Mellon, who bought two of Van Meegeren's fake Vermeers during the 1920s. As Koen Kleijn of De Groene Amsterdammer has remarked, “The Man Who Made Vermeer" shatters the popular image of Han van Meegeren as a lone gunman or picaresque rogue. Jonathan Lopez reveals the master forger as an arch-opportunist, a cunning liar, and a fervent sympathizer of the fascist cause from as early as 1928. Deftly reconstructing an insidious network of illicit trade in the art market's underworld, Lopez allows few reputations to emerge unscathed in this gripping and delicious book.”

(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.