Johannes Vermeer - Girl with the Red Hat [c.1665-66]

Girl with the Red Hat, one of Johannes Vermeer’s smallest works, is painted on panel rather than on the Delft master’s customary canvas. His subject has turned in her chair and interacts with the viewer through her direct gaze. The effect is unusual spontaneity and informality. The artist’s exquisite use of colour is the painting’s most striking characteristic, for both its compositional and its psychological impact. Vermeer concentrated the two major colours in two distinct areas: a vibrant red for the hat and a sumptuous blue for the robe; he then used the intensity of the white cravat to unify the whole.

 

Vermeer (Dutch, 1632 - 1675) also owned an art dealership. No documentation of his artistic training or apprenticeship exists, but in 1653 he became a master in the Saint Luke’s Guild, a professional artists’ trade organization. In the 1660s and 1670s he served four terms as head of the guild. In his lifetime, Vermeer’s small oeuvre was well regarded by connoisseurs, but only in the late nineteenth century did his intimate genre scenes and quiet cityscapes become world renowned.

 

[Oil on panel, 22.8 x 18 cm]

 

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