Lady Standing at a Virginal by Johannes Vermeer

Lady Standing at a Virginal by Johannes Vermeer, 1670-1672, is an oil on canvas genre painting of a finely dressed young woman in an elegant, domestic interior, playing music upon a virginal. On the wall behind her are framed paintings of a landscape and a Cupid. Vermeer contrasts cool, pleasant blue colours with warm, sunny golden yellow tones as in many of his compositions, and plays with the idea of paintings within a painting. Astute viewers will notice that rimming the floor line are a series of white tiles with blue decorations, a type of ceramic known as Delftware. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch painter of interior scenes whose works were rediscovered in the 19th century. Working as both painter and art dealer, Vermeer slowly produced a few of his painstakingly executed, richly pigmented compositions per year, living entirely within his home city of Delft, never achieving the fame of his near contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt. In the Modernist era, Vermeer’s richly textured, vibrantly colourful compositions planned in careful perspective and quasi-scientific naturalism found a new following among the artists of the Realist and Impressionist schools.