Baroque Artist Research

 Vermeer Research

Vermeer is a Dutch artist who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life. He wasn’t wealthy and didn’t work for royalty or the rich like most painters at the time, he worked for himself, thus leaving his wife and children in depts as he passed. Vermeer worked slowly and used expensive pigments where he probably shouldn’t have. He painted mostly domestic interior scenes containing a darker background and a focus on the main subject. For example, mostly famous for ‘The Girl with The Pearl Earring’ which left people with a lot of questions about the girl as it was so unique and well made.

Vermeer didn’t really become famous until after his death, though he was recognised. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbraken's major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting (Grand Theatre of Dutch Painters and Women Artists) and wasn’t fully recognised for 2 centuries after. In the 19th century, Vermeer was rediscovered by Gustav Friedrich Waagen and Théophile Thoré-Bürger, who published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him, although only 34 paintings are universally attributed to him today.

Vermeer has other paintings such as:
                                                                                The Love Letter

The Astronomer  

Each of Vermeer’s paintings were done in oil paint which also shows how good of an artist he was as he created such detailed and realistic pieces.