Vermeer - A Master of Genre Paintings
Author: NAVAL LANGAIn the style of the paintings known as Genre paintings the artists make pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets and domestic settings. Vermeer's paintings speak the language of cool observation, involving the viewer in an experience of deepening relation and visual discoveries painted in the acts of daily life. There is no other seventeenth century artist who early in his career employed, in the most lavish way, the exorbitantly expensive pigment lapis lazuli, or natural ultramarine. However no drawings have been positively attributed to neither Vermeer; nor paintings offer clues to preparatory methods.
Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes. His works are largely genre pieces and portraits, with the exception of some cityscapes. Genre painters choose the ordinary life of common men as subject. This style of paintings is also called genre scenes or genre views. These paintings are pictorial representations in any of various media that represent scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. The artists are free to use their imaginations; as such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized. Unlike modern time, the number of paints available was quite less in 17th century.
Moreover the colours were of different characteristics in regards to permanence, workability, and drying time. Vermeer mainly used white, red madder, green earth, raw umber and ivory black, yellow ochre and vermilion. If we look at the one of the paintings where Vermeer had applied the expensive ultramarine we can know better. The bread, the basket and the bowl are so vibrant that they seem competing to steal the viewers' attention. However the Focal point of the painting and the maid is the milk being poured in, by which the artist has painted the most ordinary act of daily life in a poetic statement. The bread, the basket and the bowl are so vibrant that they seem competing to steal the viewers' attention. In dependent paintings of the persons doing common acts, like carpentry and missionary, was a marked departure in Western painting.
It is because these paintings of common people doing their day to day works were without religious pretext. For similar paintings by the genre painter you may visit the following links.
About the Author:I write short stories and articles about the paintings.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Vermeer - A Master of Genre Paintings
