The Glass of Wine by Johannes Vermeer Coaster

The Glass of Wine by Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas c. 1658-1660, is one of the painter’s first mature compositions with his characteristic concerns of the effects of natural light across figures and objects in an interior genre scene. A gentleman in a large, dark hat has poured a glass of wine for a smiling young woman. Light from a stained glass window bounces over the scene of warm tones contrasting with cool ultramarine blues, a coloristic theme repeated in many of the Dutch master’s later compositions. 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.