VERMEER, JAN VAN DELFT or JAN VAN DER MEER (1632-1675), Dutch artist, was born in Delft on Oct. 31, 1632, and was a pupil of Carel Fabritius, whose junior he was by only eight years. In 1653 he married Catherine Bolens, and entered the gild of St. Luke of Delft, becoming one of the heads of the gild in 1662 and again in 167o. He died at Delft on Dec. 15, 1675, leaving a widow and eight children. At his death he left 26 pictures undisposed of, and his widow had to apply to the court of insolvency to be placed under a curator, who was Leeuwenhoek, the naturalist. For more than two centuries Vermeer was almost completely forgotten, and his pictures were sold under the names of the more popular De Hooch, Metsu, Ter Borch, and even of Rembrandt. Attention was recalled to this most original painter by Thore (pseudonym, W. Burger), an exiled Frenchman, who described his works in Musses de la Hollande (1858-6o).
Vermeer's pictures are rarely dated, but one of the most im portant, in the Dresden gallery, bears the date 1656, and thus gives us a key to his styles. With the exception of the "Christ with Martha and Mary" in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, it is perhaps the only one, hitherto recognized, that has figures of life size. The Dresden picture of a "Woman and Soldier," with two other figures, is painted with remarkable power and boldness ; for strength and colour it more than holds its own beside the neighbouring Rembrandts. To this early period of his career belong, from internal evidence, the "Reading Girl" of the same gallery, the luminous and masterly "View of Delft" in the museum of The Hague, the "Milk-Woman" and the small street view, both identified with the Six collection at Amsterdam, and now in the Rijksmuseum; the magnificent "The Letter" also at Amsterdam, "Diana and the Nymphs" at The Hague gallery and others. In all these we find the same brilliant style
and vigorous work, a solid impasto, and a crisp, sparkling touch. His first manner seems to have been influenced by the pleiad of painters circling round Rembrandt, a school which lost favour in Holland in the last quarter of the century. During the final ten or 12 years of his life Vermeer adopted a second manner. We now find his painting smooth and thin, and his colours paler and softer. Instead of masculine vigour we have refined delicacy and subtlety, but in both styles beauty of tone and perfect harmony are conspicuous. Through all his work may be traced his love of lemon-yellow and of blue of all shades. Of his second style typical examples are to be seen in "The Coquette" of the Brunswick gallery, in the "Woman Reading" in the Van der Hoop collection now at the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam, in the "Lady at a Casement" in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York, and in the "Music Master and Pupil" belonging to the King (exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1876).
Vermeer's authentic pictures in public and private collections amount to 37. There is but one in the Louvre, the "Lace Maker"; Berlin has three, all acquired in the Suermondt collection, and the Czernin gallery of Vienna possesses a picture of the artist in his studio. In the Arenberg gallery at Meppen and in The Hague Museum there are two remarkable heads of girls.
See There, a monograph in Gazette des Beaux Arts (i866) ; Harvard, Van der Meer (i888) ; • Hofstede de Groot, Jan Vermeer von Delft (Leipzig, 1909) ; E. V. Lucas, Vermeer, the Magical (1929).