Kenneth Clark TV - Waldemar Januszczak TV - Tim Marlow TV - Fake or Fortune? TV - Andrew Graham-Dixon TV - Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition TV -
Among the collection was The Concert by Vermeer. Art of the Heist s1e1: The World’s Biggest Heist
Vermeer manages to observe an air of complete naturalism. Yet what a masterpiece of abstract design he creates out of frames and windows and musical instruments. Kenneth Clark, Civilisation 8/13: The Light of Experience, BBC 1969
Jan Vermeer of Delph … Vermeer is as much of a moralist as the rest of them ... Vermeer: the fragility of life itself, the vulnerability of beauty, the shortness of youth. Waldemar Januszczak, Baroque! – From St Peter’s to St Paul’s II, BBC 2013
Look at a Vermeer painting and everything seems crystal clear. Simple scenes of women going about their daily tasks. And then you look again. And realise that nothing is quite what it seems. There’s a mystery unfolding before your eyes. Great Artists with Tim Marlow s1e12: Vermeer, Sky Arts 2003
Johannes Vermeer was born in 1632 here in Delft, a thriving market town. ibid.
He takes us away from the street – from the outside – into a domestic closed private world, and creates some of the most memorable images of Western art. ibid.
So what Vermeer is doing in this image, as he does throughout the rest of his career, is make the everyday seem epic. ibid.
As well as his use of colour, it’s Vermeer’s meticulous composition which makes him stand out as such a major artist. ibid.
He is now one of the most cherished of all the great artists by the gallery-going public. ibid.
A few years ago in our series Exhibition on Screen we brought to the cinema a fascinating show from the National Gallery here in London: entitled Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love & Leisure it explores the serene genius of Johannes Vermeer. Tim Marlow, Great Art s4e3: Johannes Vermeer and Music from the National Gallery, ITV 2020
For Vermeer and his artistic contemporaries music was a favourite subject: a means of conveying allegory or innuendo, social status or romantic encounter, the depiction of music in art carried a diverse range of meaning. ibid.
Vermeer is one of the most fascinating characters in European art. Not just because of the extraordinary and beautiful, enigmatic and seductive paintings he produced, but also because given his status in European art history, relatively little is known about him. ibid.
The Music Lesson c 1662-63: a young woman playing a keyboard while a male companion stands by … the relationship between the two is a matter of historic conjecture … the viewer held in the distance by the objects in the foreground. ibid.
Of the 36 paintings in existence commonly attributed to Vermeer, over a third are in the USA … His pictures are now priceless treasures of these museums. ibid.
A Young Woman Seated at a Virginal c.1670-72: The implication in this painting is that the young woman will soon be joined in just such a duet. ibid.
Including works by the artist Van Meegeren dared for forge – the seventeenth-century master Vermeer. Fake or Fortune III, BBC 2011
Vermeer who most memorably more hauntingly depicted the interior spaces of the Dutch household. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The High Art of the Low Countries II: Boom and Bust, BBC 2013
When you stand in front of the Vermeer there’s like intense moments of happiness. And time stands still. Vermeer: The Greatest Exhibition [Rijksmuseum], expert, ITV 2023
He such an incredible story-teller. He’s like a film director. ibid.
And it’s as if he’s taken the most mundane thing and transformed it, transfigured it, into something which feels completely magical. ibid.
There’s relatively little known about Vermeer. ibid.
The quality is very high. So the question remains, How did he do it? ibid.