Johannes Vermeer ( vər-MEER, vər-MAIR, Dutch: [vərˈmeːr], see below; October 1632 – December 1675) was a Dutch Baroque Periodpainter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately affluent provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. Nonetheless, he produced relatively few paintings and evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death.
Vermeer worked slowly and with good care, and frequently used very costly pigments. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of blithe in his work.
“Almost whatever his paintings,” Hans Koningsberger wrote, “are apparently set in two smallish rooms in his house in Delft; they operate the same furniture and decorations in various arrangements and they often picture the similar people, mostly women.”
His modest celebrity gave artifice to profundity after his death. 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 was appropriately omitted from subsequent surveys of Dutch art for nearly two centuries. 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 single-handedly 34 paintings are universally recognized to him today. Since that time, Vermeer’s reputation has grown, and he is now usual as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
Similar to further major Dutch Golden Age artists such as Frans Hals and Rembrandt, Vermeer never went abroad. Also, like Rembrandt, he was an covetous art stasher and dealer.
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