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When you think of Johannes Vermeer, you immediately think of the iconic painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring” or the intimate “The Milkmaid”. Today, he is considered one of the greatest painters of the 17th century, whose work attracts millions of people to museums around the world. But during his lifetime, he was hardly known outside his hometown of Delft. How is it possible that a painter we now consider a genius lived and worked in relative anonymity at the time? In this blog post, we list a few reasons why Vermeer's star only began to shine long after his death.
- Limited oeuvre and low production rate: Vermeer was a perfectionist and worked extremely slowly and carefully. He probably produced only about two to three paintings a year, resulting in a very small oeuvre of about 35 to 37 paintings. By comparison, many of his contemporaries produced hundreds of works. A smaller oeuvre meant less visibility and less opportunity to build a reputation.
- Regional focus: Vermeer spent almost his entire life in Delft. His clientele was mainly local, with Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven as his most important patron, who owned a large part of his works. Vermeer probably did not travel much and did not participate in the larger art markets in cities such as Amsterdam, which attracted a wider audience.
- No pupils or studio production: Unlike many successful painters of the time, who often had a large studio with pupils who collaborated in the production of paintings, Vermeer does not seem to have had a large group of pupils. This meant that no “Vermeer style” or “Vermeer school” emerged that would carry on his name and work after his death.
- No self-portraits or biographical notes: There are no known self-portraits of Vermeer, nor are there any detailed biographical writings from his time. This, combined with his quiet and focused way of working, led to him being nicknamed the “Sphinx of Delft”; relatively little is known about him personally.
- Financial problems and collapse of the art market: After the Disaster Year of 1672, the Dutch economy collapsed, and with it the art market. Vermeer fell deeply into debt and died in relative poverty in 1675. His widow, Catharina Bolnes, had to sell or pawn many of his paintings to cover the debts, which led to his works being scattered and their provenance sometimes becoming unclear.
- Later “rediscovery”: It was not until the 19th century that Vermeer was “rediscovered” by the French art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger. In the 1860s, he published a series of articles on Vermeer, bringing his work to the attention of a wider audience and allowing his reputation to grow to the global recognition he enjoys today.
So you could say that Vermeer's meticulous, slow working method, his local focus and the economic circumstances at the end of his life all contributed to the fact that his genius was only fully recognised much later.