Vermeer and the Delft Style Exhibition

Today Johannes Vermeer is one of the most celebrated Dutch painters of the seventeenth century.He was born in 1632, the son of a silk worker with a taste for buying and selling art. Vermeer himself was also active in the art trade. He lived and worked in Delft all his life.
Only 36 works are known to have been painted by Vermeer. His early paintings - mainly historical pieces - reveal the influence of the Utrecht Caravaggists. In his later works, however, he produced meticulously constructed interiors with just one or two figures - usually women. These are intimate genre paintings in which the principal figure is invariably engaged in some everyday activity: one is reading a letter, another is fastening a collar about her neck, and yet another is pouring out milk. The light often enters Vermeer's paintings from a window. He was a master at depicting the way light illuminates objects.

The name Fabritius comes from the Latin 'faber', meaning craftsman. This self-selected name suggests that Fabritius may have begun his career as a carpenter. He also learned to paint, probably from his father, a teacher in Beemster. In 1641 Fabritius became a pupil and assistant at Rembrandt's studio in Amsterdam, and stayed there for a few years. From 1645 Fabritius was active as a master painter in his own right, first in Beemster and after 1650 in Delft. He died there in 1654, one of the victims of the gunpowder explosion that devastated a quarter of the city.
Fabritius was one of Rembrandt's most promising pupils. He painted portraits and developed the art of trompe-l'oeil painting.

Pieter de Hooch was born in Rotterdam in 1617, the son of a mason and a midwife. His career as a painter started in Delft. As was typical in his day, he had a second string to his bow besides painting: he was an assistant to a linen merchant. De Hooch specialised in decorous interiors with merry companies of people. Views through windows or corridors into other, distant rooms often featured in his work. Like other Dutch genre painters,
De Hooch sometimes gave his interiors hidden messages. After moving to Amsterdam in 1661, the painters around De Hooch came to focus increasingly on an elegant and affluent style.
De Hooch eventually died in Amsterdam's Dolhuis (a mental hospital). When this happened is not known for certain.

Van der Heyden was one of the leading 17th-century painters of Dutch cityscapes. He was also fascinated by fire fighting and is still remembered to this day by many as the inventor of the fire hose. As an artist, Jan van der Heyden became famous for his serene and highly detailed land scapes. This meticulous specialisation suited his interest in technology. While Van der Heyden's paintings appear realistic, he often manipulated elements to suit the piece. Some of his paintings are pure architectural fantasy.