THE HIGH LIFE OF VERMEER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES VERMEER AND THE MASTERS OF GENRE PAINTING REINSERTS VERMEER INTO THE TRADITION IN WHICH HE WORKED, BOTH DEMYSTIFYING HIS PAINTINGS AND LENDING FORCE TO HIS PARTICULAR TAKE ON THE GENRE.

Natasha Seaman

Johannes Vermeer, “Woman with a Pearl Necklace” (c. 1662-65), oil on canvas (image courtesy of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie)

WASHINGTON D.C. — Around the middle of the 17th century, Dutch artists innovated a new genre of painting. It always features the interior of a comfortable home. There is often a window — almost always on the left — and a heavy, draping curtain. To this basic array, the artist may add: a man or a woman (a woman), tables, chairs, paintings, a mirror, a dog, a bird, a child, a maid, a doctor, a candle, a letter, a framed picture, a musical instrument. Something may be happening, but it’s not much — the kind of thing that you wouldn’t bother to tell anyone about later.

The inventor of this genre was the painter Gerard Ter Borch. After producing a series of startlingly realistic scenes of peasants at work, in the mid-1650s, he turned to small-scale domestic scenes starring his half-sister, Gesina, in resplendent satin dresses. (Gesina herself was an accomplished amateur painter.) Other artists took up this genre, including Johannes Vermeer, who had been trying his hand at large-scale history painting, but quickly saw the appeal of painting smaller, refined domestic interiors.

Vermeer, of course, is an artist of current cultural obsession. He has been the subject of films, literature, and many exhibitions, while his companions in high-life interiors, as these works are collectively called, remain relatively obscure. The secret agenda of the exhibition Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry, now on view in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., seems to be to swirl in just enough Vermeer to enable an exhibition of the lesser-known works of painters such as Ter Borch, as well as Dou, Metsu, Steen, and Maes.

Johannes Vermeer, “The Lacemaker” (c. 1670-71), oil on canvas transferred to panel (image courtesy of the Musée du Louvre, Paris)

Such sweetening might be necessary for the marketing of the show, but not for pleasure of viewing it; these are great paintings. The curators have arranged the works by subgenre, of which there are many, including women with birds, women writing letters, women with their back to the viewer, women tickling the noses of sleeping men. This arrangement allows the Vermeers to be dispersed among the other paintings, and, more important, the viewer to perceive the web of connections among the paintings, as new motifs emerge and are transformed by different artists through variations in accessories, pose, and setting……….

https://hyperallergic.com/414398/vermeer-and-the-masters-of-genre-painting-inspiration-and-rivalry-national-gallery-of-art-2017/