EXPERIENCE WITH VERMEER
I have passed through many European
Besides ceramics, I mainly focus on painting because this city is home to the famous painter Vermeer, known for the painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, which is now housed in the Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, Netherlands. Moreover, one can imagine the scenery of the past here through his paintings; his brief life was intertwined with this charming little city.
Vermeer’s house, which has become a museum, features the typical style of an old Dutch house – about 3 to 4 meters wide, similar to tube houses in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, made of two-story brick. It is located at the end of a street running along a clear blue canal.
From the artist’s house, one can see an old quarter with a church tower; on the other bank is a bustling square. The clear canal, dotted with many water lilies, resembles a canal in the Mekong Delta. I visited here at the end of spring, only seeing a few scattered water lily flowers, but in the summer, I heard that the purple color of the flowers sometimes even overshadows the green of the leaves.
At the museum, in addition to some of Vermeer’s works, there is also a lot of information and images about life in Delft during the 17th century when the artist lived (Vermeer was born in 1632 and died in 1675).
There, I realized that what art critics had written about Vermeer was indeed not far from the truth. Especially, the light that Vermeer used in his paintings is truly exceptional. Ordinary people with their daily tasks in the radiant, gentle, and pure light become quite captivating.
Those paintings are also very noteworthy because they convey a sense of tranquility and timelessness to the viewers. In Ho Chi Minh City, there was a late painter who often depicted women with Vermeer-style lighting, and he was famous: Đỗ Quang Em.
Most of his life, Vermeer lived and worked in Delft. This city is also the hometown of one of the most important Dutch painters of the 17th century: Pieter Claeszoon van Ostade (1610-1685). However, Ostade is less well-known than Vermeer.
It is worth noting that Vermeer began his painting career in the early 1650s with large-scale paintings of biblical and mythological scenes. However, most of his later paintings—the famous ones—depict scenes of daily life with the setting being household objects. Vermeer also painted scenes of the city of Delft.
Vermeer only created 36 paintings, while other artists of his time produced hundreds. Because of their scarcity and Vermeer’s artistry, those paintings are now considered rare masterpieces and are among the treasures of several major museums around the world.
Recently, art enthusiasts who cannot visit the museums displaying Vermeer paintings can download high-quality images of these paintings for free. The Rijksmuseum, the Metropolitan in New York, and the National Gallery in Washington have “opened their doors” in this way. And not just with Vermeer.
Some museum websites even offer tools to explore art history and special topics in painting.
