The Guitar Player, C.1672

Vermeer Paintings

The Guitar Player, c.1672

Oil on canvas, 20.87 x 18.23 inches [53 x 46.3 cm]

Figurative Art

      The Guitar Player is one of the most beautiful examples of Vermeer's late style.The crispness of his image and the radiant colors give the painting a glowing quality. Vermeer, in his paintings of the 1670s, was no longer concerned with describing specific textures of materials. Brushstrokes became freer and more expressive than in his earlier works as he emphasized patterns of color rather than textures. Vermeer modeled the girl's dress and jacket, for example, with sharply defined planes of color, The subtle modulations in folds and contours that he formerly created by applying glazes over opaque paints are no longer evident.
      The face also is treated differently. Its expression is outward and not self-contained. The nuances of shading that suggested qualities of character and personality have been replaced by distinctly separate areas of light, and shade. The interest in pattern is evident in the ringlets of hair silhouetted against the wall.
      In addition to the changed emphasis of his painting technique, Vermeer also built this composition on a different principle. As in he drew the focus of his composition away from the center of the painting. The girl is placed so far to the left that her arm is cut by the edge. Light falls to the left and a landscape hangs behind the girl on the back wall. The off-center composition is further emphasized by the direction of the girl's glance. Vermeer probably was reacting against the balanced, contained quality of his earlier paintings.
      One might suspect that a pendant existed which would have balanced this painting, but a document seems to provide evidence to the contrary. In January, 1676, slightly more than a month after Vermeer's death, his widow, Catharina Bolnes, appeared before the notary in Delft to settle a debt of 617 guilders and 6 stuivers with Hendrick van Buyten, master baker in the town. On that occasion she sold two paintings to him, one representing "two persons one of whom is writing a letter and the other with a person playing a guitar." One of the paintings involved in this revealing document is the Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid; the other is probably The Guitar Player. Vermeer's widow almost certainly would not have separated The Guitar Player from a pendant if one had existed.