Host: National Gallery
Date: April 12th
In this two-hour session, we will look at the paintings Vermeer created during an age of huge expansion in the 17th-century Dutch maritime republic. Against this background of capitalist growth and much turbulence, we will consider Vermeer’s search for stillness in his depiction of people in their surroundings. We will also explore his creation of luminous effects which made him famous.
Vermeer spent his entire life in Delft. This city and its people are his subjects. Although he enjoyed moderate success as a provincial genre painter, he produced very few paintings and, after his death, left his wife and family in debt.
He remained in almost total obscurity until his rediscovery in the 19th century and has now become one of the most loved painters of all time. Proust said, ‘Ever since I saw the View of Delft in the museum in The Hague, I have known that I had seen the most beautiful painting in the world’.
