Woman with a Water Jug by Johannes Vermeer Postcard

Woman with a Water Jug by Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas c. 1662, is an interior domestic genre painting of a lady in blue dress and white bonnet holding a pitcher of water while opening a stained glass window. Less formally geometric than many of Vermeer’s compositions, Woman with a Water Jug emphasizes the effects of natural light, reflections and translucency on figure, objects, colour and texture. The metallic water jug and dish at centre partake and reflect the colours of the room and objects around them in a masterpiece of naturalistic realism. Vermeer was known for his unsparing use of expensive artist pigments such as vermillion red (cinnabar) and natural ultramarine, lapis lazuli, as here on the woman’s dress, bonnet, jug and ornate tablecloth. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch master painter of interior genre scenes whose works were rediscovered in the 19th century. In carefully constructed, geometric compositions drawn in meticulous linear perspective, Vermeer explored the effects of light and colour across human figures, objects and textures in sunlit, domestic rooms, building upon the optical discoveries and 3D perspectival depth of Leonardo and the Renaissance. Both a painter and an art dealer, Vermeer slowly produced a few of his painstakingly executed, richly pigmented compositions per year, living entirely within his home city of Delft, eschewing the fame of his near contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt that he achieved finally in the modern era.