A Girl Asleep by Johannes Vermeer Postcard

A Girl Asleep by Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas c. 1657, is a painting of a young woman dozing to sleep in a cosy dining room interior in low evening light. The chair in the foreground pushed back from the ornate red tablecloth and still life of fruit, pitcher and glass of wine may imply that a visitor has departed through the door in the background. Vermeer contrasts the vivid, jewel-like reds and blues of the interior details with the warm, dusky ambient evening light entering the domestic scene. The bowl and jug on the table, white with blue decor patterns, are Delftware, a type of glazed ceramic produced in Vermeer’s home city of Delft. 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.