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123-568: Vereniging Rembrandt ( Rembrandt Association ) is a Dutch association of art patrons who raise funds to assist Dutch museums and art galleries in purchasing artworks. Since it was founded in 1883, it has helped purchase over two thousand works, including Vermeer's The Milkmaid . The 19th century saw a major exodus of Dutch art out of the country. In 1883 the 'de Vos' drawings collection came to auction, but remained out of reach of any Dutch museum's budget. A few private individuals in Amsterdam founded

246-451: A "reality effect" rather than an actual realist depiction; the degree to which this is the case varies between artists. Many paintings which seem only to depict everyday scenes actually illustrated Dutch proverbs and sayings or conveyed a moralistic message – the meaning of which may now need to be deciphered by art historians, though some are clear enough. Many artists, and no doubt purchasers, certainly tried to have things both ways, enjoying

369-467: A British art historian and lecturer. Yet the whitewashed wall and presence of milk seem to indicate that the room was a "cool kitchen" used for cooking with dairy products, such as milk and butter, so the foot warmer would have a pragmatic purpose there. Since other Dutch paintings of the period indicate that foot warmers were used when seated, its presence in the picture may symbolize the standing woman's "hardworking nature", according to Cant. The painting

492-568: A Pearl Earring . She is not the cartoonish buxom vixen in Leyden's drawing. She is real — as real as a painting can get anyway." This painting has "perhaps, the most brilliant color scheme of his oeuvre", according to the Essential Vermeer website. Already in the 18th century, English painter and critic Joshua Reynolds praised the work for its striking quality. One of the distinctions of Vermeer's palette , compared with his contemporaries,

615-417: A brought-in specialist master, although, or because, they were regarded as a very important part of the painting. Married and never-married women can be distinguished by their dress, highlighting how few single women were painted, except in family groups. As elsewhere, the accuracy of the clothes shown is variable - striped and patterned clothes were worn, but artists rarely show them, understandably avoiding

738-515: A generous cleavage or stretch of thigh, usually when painting prostitutes or "Italian" peasants. Portrait painting thrived in the Netherlands in the 17th century, as there was a large mercantile class who were far more ready to commission portraits than their equivalents in other countries; a summary of various estimates of total production arrives at between 750,000 and 1,100,000 portraits. Rembrandt enjoyed his greatest period of financial success as

861-410: A great number of genre works. Another popular source of meaning is visual puns using the great number of Dutch slang terms in the sexual area: the vagina could be represented by a lute ( luit ) or stocking ( kous ), and sex by a bird ( vogelen ), among many other options, and purely visual symbols such as shoes, spouts, and jugs and flagons on their side. The same painters often painted works in

984-648: A great number of short lives of artists – over 500 in Houbraken's case – and both are considered generally accurate on factual matters. The German artist Joachim von Sandrart (1606–1688) had worked for periods in Holland, and his Deutsche Akademie in the same format covers many Dutch artists he knew. Houbraken's master, and Rembrandt's pupil, was Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627–1678), whose Zichtbare wereld and Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst (1678) contain more critical than biographical information and are among

1107-495: A history painter before finding financial success as a portraitist, and he never relinquished his ambitions in this area. A great number of his etchings are of narrative religious scenes, and the story of his last history commission, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis (1661) illustrates both his commitment to the form and the difficulties he had in finding an audience. Several artists, many his pupils, attempted with some success to continue his very personal style; Govaert Flinck

1230-515: A large number of sub-types within the genre: single figures, peasant families, tavern scenes, " merry company " parties, women at work about the house, scenes of village or town festivities (though these were still more common in Flemish painting), market scenes, barracks scenes, scenes with horses or farm animals, in snow, by moonlight, and many more. In fact, most of these had specific terms in Dutch, but there

1353-598: A low-quality yellowed version of the image which was circulating on the Internet was a good reproduction of the image. Dutch Golden Age painting#Scenes of everyday life Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the Dutch Golden Age , a period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence. The new Dutch Republic

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1476-535: A meticulous, illusionistic way." Liedtke sees the work as either Vermeer's "last early work or first mature work". The curator added, "I almost think he had to explore what you might call 'tactile illusionism' to understand where he really wanted to go, which was in the more optical, light-filled direction." Characteristic of Delft artistry and of Vermeer's work, the painting also has a "classic balance" of figurative elements and an "extraordinary treatment of light", according to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The wall on

1599-424: A metre or more across), were Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691) and Philips Koninck (1619–1688). Cuyp took golden Italian light and used it in evening scenes with a group of figures in the foreground and behind them a river and wide landscape. Koninck's best works are panoramic views, as from a hill, over wide flat farmlands, with a huge sky. A different type of landscape, produced throughout the tonal and classical phases,

1722-403: A more neutral way, as did Michael Sweerts . Vermeer's painting is one of the rare examples of a maid treated in an empathetic and dignified way, although amorous symbols in this work still exemplify the tradition. Other painters in this tradition, such as Gerrit Dou (1613–1675), depicted attractive maids with symbolic objects such as jugs and various forms of game and produce. "In almost all

1845-439: A new canvas, stretcher and frame. There was very little Dutch sculpture during the period; it is mostly found in tomb monuments and attached to public buildings, and small sculptures for houses are a noticeable gap, their place taken by silverware and ceramics . Painted delftware tiles were very cheap and common, if rarely of really high quality, but silver, especially in the auricular style , led Europe. With this exception,

1968-443: A period, including Cuyp. From the 1650s the "classical phase" began, retaining the atmospheric quality, but with more expressive compositions and stronger contrasts of light and colour. Compositions are often anchored by a single "heroic tree", windmill or tower, or ship in marine works. The leading artist was Jacob van Ruisdael (1628–1682), who produced a great quantity and variety of work, using every typical Dutch subject except

2091-432: A plain room carefully pouring milk into a squat earthenware container on a table. Milkmaids began working solely in the stables before large houses hired them to do housework as well rather than hiring out for more staff. Also on the table in front of the milkmaid are various types of bread. She is a young, sturdily built woman wearing a crisp linen cap, a blue apron and work sleeves pushed up from thick forearms. A foot warmer

2214-540: A portrait painted was upon marriage, when the new husband and wife more often than not occupied separate frames in a pair of paintings. Rembrandt's later portraits compel by force of characterization, and sometimes a narrative element, but even his early portraits can be dispiriting en masse , as in the roomful of 'starter Rembrandts' donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The other great portraitist of

2337-444: A private chamber he wears riding clothes. Jan de Bray encouraged his sitters to pose costumed as figures from classical history, but many of his works are of his own family. Thomas de Keyser , Bartholomeus van der Helst , Ferdinand Bol and others, including many mentioned below as history or genre painters, did their best to enliven more conventional works. Portraiture, less affected by fashion than other types of painting, remained

2460-405: A specific commission than was then the case in other countries – one of many ways in which the Dutch art market showed the future. There were many dynasties of artists, and many married the daughters of their masters or other artists. Many artists came from well-off families, who paid fees for their apprenticeships, and they often married into property. Rembrandt and Jan Steen were both enrolled at

2583-417: A symbol of the female anatomy. The foot warmer was often used by artists as a symbol for female sexual arousal because, when placed under a skirt, it heats the whole body below the waist, according to Liedtke. The coals enclosed inside the foot warmer could symbolize "either the heat of lust in tavern or brothel scenes, or the hidden but true burning passion of a woman for her husband", according to Serena Cant,

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2706-554: A table, with solemn expressions on their faces. Most militia group portraits were commissioned in Haarlem and Amsterdam and were much more flamboyant and relaxed or even boisterous than other types of portraits, as well as much larger. Early examples showed them dining, but later groups showed most figures standing for a more dynamic composition. Rembrandt's famous The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq better known as

2829-538: A task in which it was very largely successful. The painting of religious subjects declined very sharply, but a large new market for all kinds of secular subjects grew up. Although Dutch painting of the Golden Age is included in the general European period of Baroque painting , and often shows many of its characteristics, most lacks the idealization and love of splendour typical of much Baroque work, including that of neighbouring Flanders . Most work, including that for which

2952-520: A very different spirit of housewives or other women at rest in the home or at work – they massively outnumber similar treatments of men. In fact, working-class men going about their jobs are notably absent from Dutch Golden Age art, with landscapes populated by travellers and idlers but rarely tillers of the soil. Despite the Dutch Republic being the most important nation in international trade in Europe, and

3075-475: A very personal development of 16th-century styles. Aert van der Neer (d. 1677) painted very small scenes of rivers at night or under ice and snow. Landscapes with animals in the foreground were a distinct sub-type, and were painted by Cuyp, Paulus Potter (1625–1654), Albert Jansz. Klomp (1625-1688), Adriaen van de Velde (1636–1672) and Karel Dujardin (1626–1678, farm animals), with Philips Wouwerman painting horses and riders in various settings. The cow

3198-422: A young Amsterdam portraitist, but like other artists, grew rather bored with painting commissioned portraits of burghers: "artists travel along this road without delight", according to van Mander. While Dutch portrait painting avoids the swagger and excessive rhetoric of the aristocratic Baroque portraiture current in the rest of 17th-century Europe, the sombre clothing of male and in many cases female sitters, and

3321-448: Is a suggestion that the piece is going stale. The small roll at the far right has thick impastoed dots that resemble a knobbly crust or a crust with seeds on it. The bread and basket, despite being closer to the viewer, are painted in a more diffuse way than the illusionistic realism of the wall, with its stains, shadowing, nail and nail hole, or the seams and fastenings of the woman's dress, the gleaming, polished brass container hanging from

3444-471: Is a tactile, visceral quality to The Milkmaid — you can almost taste the thick, creamy milk escaping the jug, feel the cool dampness of the room and the starchy linen of the maid's white cap, touch her sculptural shoulders and corseted waist. She is not an apparition or abstraction. She is not the ideal, worldly housewife of Vermeer's later Young Woman with a Water Pitcher or the ethereal beauty in Girl with

3567-458: Is less accurate in modern Dutch, the word "meid" (maid) has gained a negative connotation that is not present in its diminutive form ("meisje")—hence the use of the more friendly title for the work, used by the Rijksmuseum and others. According to art historian Harry Rand, the painting suggests the woman is making bread pudding , which would account for the milk and the broken pieces of bread on

3690-426: Is on the floor behind her, near Delft wall tiles depicting Cupid (to the viewer's left) and a figure with a pole (to the right). Intense light streams from the window on the left side of the canvas. The painting is strikingly illusionistic , conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table. "The light, though bright, doesn't wash out the rough texture of the bread crusts or flatten

3813-465: Is part of a social context of the sexual or romantic interactions of maids and men of higher social ranks that has now disappeared in Europe and which was never commonly recognized in America. Liedtke offers as an example Vermeer's contemporary, Samuel Pepys , whose diary records encounters with kitchen maids, oyster girls, and, at an inn during a 1660 visit to Delft, "an exceedingly pretty lass ... right for

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3936-458: The Night Watch (1642), was an ambitious and not entirely successful attempt to show a group in action, setting out for a patrol or parade, also innovative in avoiding the typical very wide format of such works. The cost of group portraits was usually shared by the subjects, often not equally. The amount paid might determine each person's place in the picture, either head to toe in full regalia in

4059-563: The Dutch Revolt , which had produced a strong reaction towards realism and a distrust of grandiose visual rhetoric. History painting was now a "minority art", although to an extent this was redressed by a relatively keen interest in print versions of history subjects. More than in other types of painting, Dutch history painters continued to be influenced by Italian painting. Prints and copies of Italian masterpieces circulated and suggested certain compositional schemes. The growing Dutch skill in

4182-535: The French invasion of 1672 is the core of Golden Age painting. Artists would spend most of their careers painting only portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, seascapes and ships, or still lifes , and often a particular sub-type within these categories. Many of these types of subjects were new in Western painting, and the way the Dutch painted them in this period was decisive for their future development. A distinctive feature of

4305-458: The University of Leiden for a while. Several cities had distinct styles and specialities by subject, but Amsterdam was the largest artistic centre, because of its great wealth. Cities such as Haarlem and Utrecht were more important in the first half of the century, with Leiden and other cities emerging after 1648, and above all Amsterdam, which increasingly drew to it artists from the rest of

4428-404: The "Pre-Rembrandtists", as Rembrandt's early paintings were in this style. Utrecht Caravaggism describes a group of artists who produced both history painting and generally large genre scenes in an Italian-influenced style, often making heavy use of chiaroscuro . Utrecht, before the revolt the most important city in the new Dutch territory, was an unusual Dutch city, still about 40% Catholic in

4551-581: The 1630s in the cases of Abraham Bloemaert and Joachim Wtewael . Many history paintings were small in scale, with the German painter (based in Rome) Adam Elsheimer as much an influence as Caravaggio (both died in 1610) on Dutch painters like Pieter Lastman , Rembrandt's master, and Jan and Jacob Pynas . Compared to Baroque history painting from other countries, they shared the Dutch emphasis on realism, and narrative directness, and are sometimes known as

4674-600: The 16th century first served as an example. These had been not particularly realistic, having been painted mostly in the studio, partly from imagination, and often still using the semi-aerial view from above typical of earlier Netherlandish landscape painting in the " world landscape " tradition of Joachim Patinir , Herri met de Bles and the early Pieter Bruegel the Elder . A more realistic Dutch landscape style developed, seen from ground level, often based on drawings made outdoors, with lower horizons which made it possible to emphasize

4797-611: The Antwerp painters Joachim Beuckelaer (c. 1535–1575) and Frans Snyders (1579–1657), who had many followers and imitators, as well as Pieter Aertsen (who, like Beukelaer, had clients in Delft), the Utrecht Mannerist painter Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638), and his son, Peter Wtewael (1596–1660). Closer to Vermeer's day, Nicolaes Maes painted several comic pictures now given titles such as The Lazy Servant . However by this time there

4920-472: The Calvinist feeling that the inclusion of props, possessions or views of land in the background would show the sin of pride leads to an undeniable sameness in many Dutch portraits, for all their technical quality. Even a standing pose is usually avoided, as a full-length might also show pride. Poses are undemonstrative, especially for women, though children may be allowed more freedom. The classic moment for having

5043-622: The Drapers' Guild is a subtle treatment of a group round a table. Scientists often posed with instruments and objects of their study around them. Physicians sometimes posed together around a cadaver, a so-called 'Anatomical Lesson', the most famous one being Rembrandt's Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632, Mauritshuis , The Hague ). Boards of trustees in their regentenstuk portraits preferred an image of austerity and humility, posing in dark clothing (which by its refinement testified to their prominent standing in society), often seated around

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5166-572: The Elder were among the first to turn into their principal subjects, also making use of proverbs. The Haarlem painters Willem Pieterszoon Buytewech , Frans Hals and Esaias van de Velde were important painters early in the period. Buytewech painted " merry companies " of finely dressed young people, with moralistic significance lurking in the detail. Van de Velde was also important as a landscapist, whose scenes included unglamorous figures very different from those in his genre paintings, which were typically set at garden parties in country houses. Hals

5289-516: The Elder , and later his son Willem van Mieris , Godfried Schalcken , and Adriaen van der Werff . This later generation, whose work now seems over-refined compared to their predecessors, also painted portraits and histories, and were the most highly regarded and rewarded Dutch painters by the end of the period, whose works were sought after all over Europe. Genre paintings reflected the increasing prosperity of Dutch society, and settings grew steadily more comfortable, opulent and carefully depicted as

5412-588: The French invasion of 1672 (the Rampjaar , or "year of disaster") brought a severe depression to the art market, which never quite returned to earlier heights. The distribution of pictures was very wide: "yea many tymes, blacksmithes, cobblers etts., will have some picture or other by their Forge and in their stalle. Such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native have to Painting" reported an English traveller in 1640. There were, for virtually

5535-844: The Hague and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. In 1999 and 2000 the painting was at the National Gallery of Art in Washington for its exhibition "Johannes Vermeer: The Art of Painting", and it was part of the "Vermeer and the Delft School" exhibition at the National Gallery , London from June 20 to September 16, 2001 (it did not appear at the Metropolitan Museum of Art venue of that exhibition, earlier that year). The painting returned to New York in 2009, on

5658-496: The Italianate landscape (below); instead, he produced "Nordic" landscapes of dark and dramatic mountain pine forests with rushing torrents and waterfalls. His pupil was Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709), best known for his atypical Avenue at Middelharnis (1689, London), a departure from his usual scenes of watermills and roads through woods. Two other artists with more personal styles, whose best work included larger pictures (up to

5781-655: The Low Countries depended on it for trade, battled with it for new land, and battled on it with competing nations. Important early figures in the move to realism were Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630) and Hendrick Avercamp (1585–1634), both also mentioned above as genre painters – in Avercamp's case the same paintings deserve mention in each category. From the late 1620s the "tonal phase" of landscape painting started, as artists softened or blurred their outlines, and concentrated on an atmospheric effect, with great prominence given to

5904-505: The Milkmaid (about 1610). Vermeer's painting is even more understated, although the use of symbols remains: one of the Delft tiles at the foot of the wall behind the maid, near the foot warmer, depicts Cupid – which can imply arousal of a woman or simply that while she is working she is daydreaming about a man. Other amorous symbols in the painting include a wide-mouthed jug, often used as

6027-453: The Netherlands and/or supporting acquisitions by Dutch galleries and museums. Initially the Vereniging only loaned the funds, to be repaid later by the state or by the museum or gallery itself, but later donations were given to purchase works both in the Netherlands and overseas, both Dutch and non-Dutch works. After 1945 it expanded its remit from old masters to modern art and an educational aim

6150-591: The Netherlands, as well as Flanders and Germany. Dutch artists were strikingly less concerned about artistic theory than those of many nations, and less given to discussing their art; it appears that there was also much less interest in artistic theory in general intellectual circles and among the wider public than was by then common in Italy. As nearly all commissions and sales were private, and between bourgeois individuals whose accounts have not been preserved, these are also less well documented than elsewhere. But Dutch art

6273-757: The Netherlands. Scenes of everyday life, now called genre paintings , prominently feature figures to whom no specific identity can be attached – they are not portraits or intended as historical figures, but rather snapshots of quotidian life. Together with landscape painting, the development and enormous popularity of genre painting is the most distinctive feature of Dutch painting in this period, although in this case they were also very popular in Flemish painting. Many are single figures, such as Vermeer's The Milkmaid ; others may show large groups at some social occasion, or crowds. "Seventeenth-century Holland produced more and better artists dedicated to genre painting with and without messages than any other nation." There were

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6396-458: The Vereniging before the auction was completed and managed to help keep a large number of major drawings from the collection in the Netherlands. Its initial aims were to fund the conservation of Dutch artworks already in the Netherlands and buying back ones from abroad, though it is no longer limited to works by Rembrandt , and other 17th century Dutch Golden Age painters. Its current aims include helping to acquire works for public collections in

6519-463: The abundance of marine paintings, scenes of dock workers and other commercial activities are very rare. This group of subjects was a Dutch invention, reflecting the cultural preoccupations of the age, and was to be adopted by artists from other countries, especially France, in the two centuries following. The tradition developed from the realism and detailed background activity of Early Netherlandish painting, which Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel

6642-501: The artist in 1696. Records of that sale described The Milkmaid as "exceptionally good", and the work brought the second-highest price in the sale (175 guilders , exceeded only by the 200 guilders paid for Vermeer's cityscape, View of Delft . ) In 1765 the painting was auctioned by Leendert Pieter de Neufville . "The famous milkmaid, by Vermeer of Delft, artful", went through at least five Amsterdam collections before it became part of what The Metropolitan Museum of Art called "one of

6765-423: The artist painted it over, producing the slight shift in tone ( pentimento ) on the wall behind the foot warmer. The basket was later discovered with an X-ray . Other Vermeer paintings also have images removed. Some art critics have thought the removals may have been intended to provide the works with better thematic focus. "[I]ts rustic immediacy differs from Vermeer's later paintings," according to Laneri. "There

6888-443: The best artistic efforts were concentrated on painting and printmaking. Foreigners remarked on the enormous quantities of art produced and the large fairs where many paintings were sold – it has been roughly estimated that over 1.3 million Dutch pictures were painted in the 20 years after 1640 alone. The volume of production meant that prices were fairly low, except for the best known artists; as in most subsequent periods, there

7011-582: The burghers, and depictions were allowed more freedom and display. A distinctive type of painting, combining elements of the portrait, history, and genre painting was the tronie . This was usually a half-length of a single figure which concentrated on capturing an unusual mood or expression. The actual identity of the model was not supposed to be important, but they might represent a historical figure and be in exotic or historic costume. Jan Lievens and Rembrandt, many of whose self-portraits are also tronies (especially his etched ones), were among those who developed

7134-422: The canvas would have been tied to a string with chalk on it, which the painter would have snapped to get perspective lines, Liedtke said in a 2009 interview. The woman's bulky green oversleeves were painted with the same yellow and blue paint used in the rest of the woman's clothing, worked at the same time in a wet-on-wet method. Broad strokes in the painting of the clothing suggests the coarse, thick texture of

7257-408: The categories in the hierarchy were: The Dutch concentrated heavily on the "lower" categories, but by no means rejected the concept of the hierarchy. Most paintings were relatively small – the only common type of really large paintings were group portraits. Painting directly onto walls hardly existed; when a wall-space in a public building needed decorating, fitted framed canvas was normally used. For

7380-572: The category, and were treated in a realist fashion, as the appropriate combination of portraits with marine, townscape or landscape subjects. Large dramatic historical or Biblical scenes were produced less frequently than in other countries, as there was no local market for church art, and few large aristocratic Baroque houses to fill. More than that, the Protestant population of major cities had been exposed to some remarkably hypocritical uses of Mannerist allegory in unsuccessful Habsburg propaganda during

7503-507: The century progressed. Artists not part of the Leiden group whose common subjects also were more intimate genre groups included Nicolaes Maes , Gerard ter Borch and Pieter de Hooch , whose interest in light in interior scenes was shared with Jan Vermeer , long a very obscure figure, but now the most highly regarded genre painter of all. Landscape painting was a major genre in the 17th century. Flemish landscapes (particularly from Antwerp ) of

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7626-552: The century, it began to become clear to all involved that the old idea of a guild controlling both training and sales no longer worked well, and gradually the guilds were replaced with academies , often only concerned with the training of artists. The Hague , with the court, was an early example, where artists split into two groups in 1656 with the founding of the Confrerie Pictura . With the obvious exception of portraits, many more Dutch paintings were done "speculatively" without

7749-571: The court and church, led to a resurgence of artists guilds, often still called the Guild of Saint Luke . In many cases these involved the artists extricating themselves from medieval groupings where they shared a guild with several other trades, such as housepainting. Several new guilds were established in the period: Amsterdam in 1579, Haarlem in 1590, and Gouda , Rotterdam , Utrecht and Delft between 1609 and 1611. The Leiden authorities distrusted guilds and did not allow one until 1648. Later in

7872-415: The crust of the bread, as well as the crust itself, along with the plaited handles of the bread basket, are rendered with pointillé dots. Soft parts of the bread are rendered with thin swirls of paint, with dabs of ochre used to show the rough edges of broken crust. One piece of bread to the viewer's right and close to the Dutch oven, has a broad band of yellow, different from the crust, which Cant believes

7995-410: The department of European paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art , and organizer of two Vermeer exhibits. "There's a bit of mystery about her for modern audiences. She is going about her daily task, faintly smiling. And our reaction is 'What is she thinking?'" The woman would have been known as a "kitchen maid" or maid-of-all-work rather than a specialised " milkmaid " at the time the painting

8118-406: The depiction of disorderly households or brothel scenes, while providing a moral interpretation – the works of Jan Steen , whose other profession was as an innkeeper, are an example. The balance between these elements is still debated by art historians today. The titles given later to paintings often distinguish between " taverns " or " inns " and " brothels ", but in practice these were very often

8241-525: The depiction of light was brought to bear on styles derived from Italy, notably that of Caravaggio . Some Dutch painters also travelled to Italy, though this was less common than with their Flemish contemporaries, as can be seen from the membership of the Bentvueghels club in Rome. In the early part of the century many Northern Mannerist artists with styles formed in the previous century continued to work, until

8364-457: The drudgery of housework and servitude to virtuous, even heroic, levels." An impression of monumentality and "perhaps a sense of dignity" is lent to the image by the artist's choice of a relatively low vantage point and a pyramidal building up of forms from the left foreground to the woman's head, according to a web page of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. According to the Rijksmuseum, the painting "is built up along two diagonal lines. They meet by

8487-418: The extra precision possible on a hard surface, many painters continued to use wooden panels, sometime after the rest of Western Europe had abandoned them; some used copper plates, usually recycling plates from printmaking . In turn, the number of surviving Golden Age paintings was reduced by them being overpainted with new works by artists throughout the 18th and 19th century – poor ones were usually cheaper than

8610-406: The extra work. Lace and ruff collars were unavoidable and presented a formidable challenge to painters' intent on realism. Rembrandt evolved a more effective way of painting patterned lace, laying in broad white stokes, and then painting lightly in black to show the pattern. Another way of doing this was to paint in white over a black layer and scratch off the white with the end of the brush to show

8733-496: The first time, many professional art dealers, several also significant artists, like Vermeer and his father, Jan van Goyen and Willem Kalf . Rembrandt's dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh and his son Gerrit were among the most important. Landscapes were the easiest uncommissioned works to sell, and their painters were the "common footmen in the Army of Art" according to Samuel van Hoogstraten . The technical quality of Dutch artists

8856-492: The foreground or face only in the back of the group. Sometimes all group members paid an equal sum, which was likely to lead to quarrels when some members gained a more prominent place in the picture than others. In Amsterdam most of these paintings would ultimately end up in the possession of the city council, and many are now on display in the Amsterdams Historisch Museum ; there are no significant examples outside

8979-566: The genre. Family portraits tended, as in Flanders, to be set outdoors in gardens, but without an extensive view as later in England, and to be relatively informal in dress and mood. Group portraits, largely a Dutch invention, were popular among the large numbers of civic associations that were a notable part of Dutch life, such as the officers of a city's schutterij or militia guards, boards of trustees and regents of guilds and charitable foundations and

9102-523: The great collectors of Dutch art", that of Lucretia Johanna van Winter (1785–1845). In 1822 she married into the Six family of collectors, and in 1908 her two sons sold the painting (as part of the famous Six collection of thirty-nine works) to the Rijksmuseum, which acquired the works with support from the Dutch government and the Rembrandt Society — but not before a good deal of public squabbling and

9225-438: The hands of the 17th-century Dutch – almost universally literate in the vernacular, but mostly without education in the classics – turned into the popularist and highly moralistic works of Jacob Cats , Roemer Visscher , and others, often based in popular proverbs . The illustrations to these are often quoted directly in paintings, and since the start of the 20th century art historians have attached proverbs, sayings and mottoes to

9348-572: The household. "Her measured demeanor, modest dress and judiciousness in preparing her food conveys eloquently yet unobtrusively one of the strongest values of 17th-century Netherlands, domestic virtue", according to the Essential Vermeer website. "In the end, it is not the allusions to female sexuality that give this painting its romance or emotional resonance — it is the depiction of honest, hard work as something romantic in and of itself," Raquel Laneri wrote in Forbes magazine. " The Milkmaid elevates

9471-571: The intervention of the States-General or Dutch parliament. The painting has been exhibited in western Europe and in the United States. In 1872 it was part of an Amsterdam exhibition of " old masters " ("Tentoonstelling van zeldzame en belangrijke schilderijen van oude meesters"), for Arti et Amicitiae, a society of visual artists and art lovers, and in 1900 it was part of an exhibition at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam . Other European exhibits showing

9594-468: The left, according to Liedtke, "gets you very quickly in the picture—that recession from the left and then the openness to the right—and this sort of left-corner scheme was used for about 10 years before Vermeer, and he was very quick to pick up the latest thing." "Nowhere else in his oeuvre does one find such a sculptural figure and such seemingly tangible objects, and yet the future painter of luminous interiors has already arrived," according to

9717-414: The like. Especially in the first half of the century, portraits were very formal and stiff in composition. Groups were often seated around a table, each person looking at the viewer. Much attention was paid to fine details in clothing, and where applicable, to furniture and other signs of a person's position in society. Later in the century groups became livelier and colours brighter. Rembrandt's Syndics of

9840-474: The mid-century, even more among the elite groups, who included many rural nobility and gentry with town houses there. The leading artists were Hendrick ter Brugghen , Gerard van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen , and the school was active about 1630, although van Honthorst continued until the 1650s as a successful court painter to the English, Dutch and Danish courts in a more classical style. Rembrandt began as

9963-482: The most important treatises on painting of the period. Like other Dutch works on the theory of art, they expound many commonplaces of Renaissance theory and do not entirely reflect contemporary Dutch art, still often concentrating on history painting. This category comprises not only paintings that depicted historical events of the past, but also paintings that showed biblical, mythological, literary and allegorical scenes. Recent historical events essentially fell out of

10086-403: The museum. The " pointillé pattern of bright dots on the bread and basket" are the "most effusive" use of that scheme in any Vermeer painting, and it appears to be used to suggest "scintillating daylight and rough textures at the same time." Vermeer painted over two items originally in the painting. One was a large wall map (a Rijksmuseum web page calls it a painting) behind the upper part of

10209-406: The occasion of NY400 , the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson 's historic voyage (Amsterdam to Manhattan), where it was the central feature of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition, alongside several of the museum's five Vermeer works and other Dutch Golden Age paintings . The painting was exhibited online in a high-quality digital version after museum curators found that many people thought that

10332-418: The often impressive cloud formations that were (and are) so typical in the climate of the region, and which cast a particular light. Favourite subjects were the dunes along the western seacoast, rivers with their broad adjoining meadows where cattle grazed, often with the silhouette of a city in the distance. Winter landscapes with frozen canals and creeks also abounded. The sea was a favourite topic as well since

10455-563: The outbreak of World War II during the fair – with the German occupation of the Netherlands – caused the work to remain in the U.S. until Holland was liberated. During this time it was displayed at the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan (the museum where the curator of the World's Fair exhibit was working), and was included in that museum's exhibition catalogues in 1939 and 1941. During the war,

10578-416: The owner of twenty-one of the painter's works), probably bought the painting directly from the artist. Liedtke doubts that the patron ordered the subject matter. Ownership later passed on, perhaps to his widow, Maria de Knuijt , probably their daughter, Magdelene van Ruijven (1655–1681), and certainly to Van Ruijven's son-in-law, Jacob Dissius (1653–1695), whose estate sold it with other paintings by

10701-457: The painting's completion is unknown, with estimates varying by source. The Rijksmuseum estimates it as circa 1658. According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, it was painted in about 1657 or 1658. The "Essential Vermeer" website gives a broader range of 1658–1661. The painting shows a milkmaid, a woman who milks cows and makes dairy products like butter and cheese, in

10824-452: The pattern. At the end of the century there was a fashion for showing sitters in a semi-fancy dress, begun in England by van Dyck in the 1630s, known as "picturesque" or "Roman" dress. Aristocratic, and militia, sitters allowed themselves more freedom in bright dress and expansive settings than burghers, and religious affiliations probably affected many depictions. By the end of the century aristocratic, or French, values were spreading among

10947-485: The period is Frans Hals , whose famously lively brushwork and ability to show sitters looking relaxed and cheerful adds excitement to even the most unpromising subjects. The extremely "nonchalant pose" of his portrait of Willem Heythuijsen is exceptional: "no other portrait from this period is so informal". The sitter was a wealthy textile merchant who had already commissioned Hals' only individual life-sized full-length portrait ten years before. In this much smaller work for

11070-400: The period is best known, reflects the traditions of detailed realism inherited from Early Netherlandish painting . A distinctive feature of the period is the proliferation of distinct genres of paintings, with the majority of artists producing the bulk of their work within one of these. The full development of this specialization is seen from the late 1620s, and the period from then until

11193-642: The period, compared to earlier European painting, was the small amount of religious painting. Dutch Calvinism forbade religious painting in churches, and though biblical subjects were acceptable in private homes, relatively few were produced. The other traditional classes of history and portrait painting were present, but the period is more notable for a huge variety of other genres, sub-divided into numerous specialized categories, such as scenes of peasant life, landscapes, townscapes, landscapes with animals, maritime paintings, flower paintings and still lifes of various types. The development of many of these types of painting

11316-496: The picture contains other contemporary symbols of lust, such as onions (said to have aphrodisiacal properties), and a dangling bird. Milk also had lewd connotations, from the slang term melken , defined as "to sexually attract or lure" (a meaning that may have originated from watching farm girls working under cows, according to Liedtke). Examples of works using milk this way include Lucas van Leyden 's engraving The Milkmaid (1510) and Jacques de Gheyn II 's engraving The Archer and

11439-418: The safe fallback for Dutch artists. From what little we know of the studio procedures of artists, it seems that, as elsewhere in Europe, the face was probably drawn and perhaps painted at an initial sitting or two. The typical number of further sittings is unclear - between zero (for a Rembrandt full-length) and 50 appear documented. The clothes were left at the studio and might well be painted by assistants, or

11562-492: The same establishments, as many taverns had rooms above or behind set aside for sexual purposes: "Inn in front; brothel behind" was a Dutch proverb . The Steen above is very clearly an exemplum , and though each of the individual components of it is realistically depicted, the overall scene is not a plausible depiction of a real moment; typically, of genre painting, it is a situation that is depicted, and satirized. The Renaissance tradition of recondite emblem books had, in

11685-460: The sky, and human figures usually either absent or small and distant. Compositions based on a diagonal across the picture space became popular, and water often featured. The leading artists were Jan van Goyen (1596–1656), Salomon van Ruysdael (1602–1670), Pieter de Molyn (1595–1661), and in marine painting Simon de Vlieger (1601–1653), with a host of minor figures – a recent study lists over 75 artists who worked in van Goyen's manner for at least

11808-415: The sport". The painting was first owned by (and may have been painted for) Pieter van Ruijven, owner of several other paintings by Vermeer which also depicted attractive young women and with themes of desire and self-denial quite different from the attitude of Pepys and many of the paintings in the Dutch "kitchenmaid" tradition. In Dutch, Het Melkmeisje is the painting's most-used name. Although this title

11931-490: The style were Nicolaes Berchem (1620–1683) and Adam Pijnacker . Italianate landscapes were popular as prints, and more paintings by Berchem were reproduced in engravings during the period itself than those of any other artist. A number of other artists do not fit in any of these groups, above all Rembrandt, whose relatively few painted landscapes show various influences, including some from Hercules Seghers (c. 1589–c. 1638); his very rare large mountain valley landscapes were

12054-410: The table. Rand assumed she would have already made custard in which the bread mixed with egg would be soaking at the moment depicted in the painting. She pours milk into the Dutch oven to cover the mixture because otherwise the bread, if not simmering in liquid while it is baking, will become an unappetizing, dry crust instead of forming the typical upper surface of the pudding. She is careful in pouring

12177-405: The trickle of milk because bread pudding can be ruined when the ingredients are not accurately measured or properly combined. By depicting the working maid in the act of careful cooking, the artist presents not just a picture of an everyday scene, but one with ethical and social value. The humble woman is using common ingredients and otherwise useless stale bread to create a pleasurable product for

12300-411: The viewer may indicate Vermeer used a camera obscura , according to Cant. Liedtke points out that a pinhole discovered in the canvas "has really punctured the theory of the camera obscura [...] The idea that Vermeer traced compositions in an optical device [...] is rather naive when you consider that the light lasts maybe 10 seconds, but the painting took at least months to paint." Instead, The pin in

12423-430: The volumes of the maid's thick waist and rounded shoulders", wrote Karen Rosenberg, an art critic for The New York Times . Yet with half of the woman's face in shadow, it is "impossible to tell whether her downcast eyes and pursed lips express wistfulness or concentration," she wrote. "It's a little bit of a Mona Lisa effect" in modern viewers' reactions to the painting, according to Walter Liedtke , curator of

12546-417: The wall. The panes of glass in the window are varied in a very realistic way, with a crack in one (fourth row from the bottom, far right) reflected on the wood of the window frame. Just below that pane, another has a scratch, indicated with a thin white line. Another pane (second row from the bottom, second from right) is pushed inward within its frame. The discrepancy between objects at various distances from

12669-486: The white walls reflect the daylight with different intensities, displaying the effects of uneven textures on the plastered surfaces. The artist here used white lead , umber and charcoal black . Although the formula was widely known among Vermeer's contemporary genre painters, "perhaps no artist more than Vermeer was able to use it so effectively", according to the Essential Vermeer website. The woman's coarse features are painted with thick dabs of impasto . The seeds on

12792-402: The woman's body. (A wall map may not have been very out of place in a humble workroom such as the cold kitchen where the maid toiled: large maps in 17th-century Holland were inexpensive ways of decorating bare walls.) He originally placed a large, conspicuous clothes basket (the Rijksmuseum web page calls it a "sewing basket") near the bottom of the painting, behind the maid's red skirt, but then

12915-467: The woman's right wrist." This focuses the attention of the viewer on the pouring of the milk. The photograph-like realism of the painting resembles that of Leiden artists such as Dou, Frans van Mieris , and Gabriël Metsu . Vermeer, who was age twenty-five when he painted this work, was "shopping around in Dutch art for different styles and subjects", according to Liedtke. "He's looking, in this case, mainly at artists like Gerrit Dou and others who work in

13038-462: The work clothing. The blue cuff uses a lighter mixture of ultramarine and lead-white, together with a layer of ochre painted beneath it. The brilliant blue of the skirt or apron has been intensified with a glaze (a thin, transparent top layer) of the same color. The glazing helps suggest that the blue material is a less coarse fabric than the yellow bodice, according to Cant. Pieter van Ruijven (1624–1674), Vermeer's patron in Delft (and, at his death,

13161-463: The work include the Royal Academy of Arts ("Exhibition of Dutch Art", London) in 1929; Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume ("Exposition hollandaise: Tableaux, aquarelles et dessíns anciens et modernes", Paris) in 1921; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen ("Vermeer, oorsprong en invloed: Fabritius, De Hooch, De Witte", Rotterdam) in 1935. It was exhibited at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City, and

13284-669: The work was also displayed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it was hanging as late as 1944, according to Leidtke. In 1953, the Kunsthaus Zürich displayed the painting in an exhibition, and the next year it traveled to Italy for an exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome and the Palazzo Reale in Milan. In 1966, it was part of an exhibition at the Mauritshuis in

13407-497: The works of this tradition there is an erotic element, which is conveyed through gestures ranging from jamming chickens onto spits to gently offering — or so the direction of view suggests — an intimate glimpse of some vaguely uterine object," according to Liedtke. In Dou's 1646 painting, Girl Chopping Onions (now in the British Royal Collection ), a pewter tankard may refer to both male and female anatomy, and

13530-400: Was a source of national pride, and the major biographers are crucial sources of information. These are Karel van Mander (Het Schilderboeck, 1604), who essentially covers the previous century, and Arnold Houbraken ( De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen – "The Great Theatre of Dutch Painters", 1718–21). Both followed, and indeed exceeded, Vasari in including

13653-401: Was a steep price gradient for more fashionable artists. Those without a strong contemporary reputation, or who had fallen out of fashion, including many now considered among the greatest of the period, such as Vermeer , Frans Hals and Rembrandt in his last years, had considerable problems earning a living, and died poor; many artists had other jobs, or abandoned art entirely. In particular,

13776-537: Was added in 2002. It began with 250 members, rising to 300 by 1907, 900 by 1983, over 12,650 by the end of 2015 and around 15,700 members by the end of 2018. Museums supported by the Vereniging give free entry to their permanent displays to its members. Its other income streams include donations, bequests, returns on its investments and since 1960 an annual contribution from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds . The Milkmaid (Vermeer) The exact year of

13899-442: Was an alternative convention of painting women at work in the home as exemplars of Dutch domestic virtue, dealt with at length by Simon Schama . In Dutch literature and paintings of Vermeer's time, maids were often depicted as subjects of male desire—dangerous women threatening the honor and security of the home, the center of Dutch life—although some Vermeer contemporaries, such as Pieter de Hooch , had started to represent them in

14022-682: Was as likely to paint a single figure as a group, as were the Utrecht Caravaggisti in their genre works, and the single figure, or small groups of two or three became increasingly common, especially those including women and children. The most notable woman artist of the period, Judith Leyster (1609–1660), specialized in these, before her husband, Jan Miense Molenaer , prevailed on her to give up painting. The Leiden school of fijnschilder ("fine painters") were renowned for small and highly finished paintings, many of this type. Leading artists included Gerard Dou , Gabriel Metsu , Frans van Mieris

14145-492: Was created: "milk maids" were women who milked cows; kitchen maids worked in kitchens. For at least two centuries before the painting was created, milkmaids and kitchen maids had a reputation as being predisposed to love or sex, and this was frequently reflected in Dutch paintings of kitchen and market scenes from Antwerp , Utrecht and Delft . Some of the paintings were slyly suggestive, like The Milkmaid , others more coarsely so. The leading artists in this tradition were

14268-427: Was decisively influenced by 17th-century Dutch artists. The widely held theory of the " hierarchy of genres " in painting, whereby some types were regarded as more prestigious than others, led many painters to want to produce history painting. However, this was the hardest to sell, as even Rembrandt found. Many were forced to produce portraits or genre scenes, which sold much more easily. In descending order of status,

14391-462: Was generally high, still mostly following the old medieval system of training by apprenticeship with a master. Typically, workshops were smaller than in Flanders or Italy, with only one or two apprentices at a time, the number often being restricted by guild regulations. The turmoil of the early years of the Republic, with displaced artists from the south moving north and the loss of traditional markets in

14514-555: Was his preference for the expensive natural ultramarine (made from crushed lapis lazuli ) where other painters typically used the much cheaper azurite . Along with the ultramarine, lead-tin-yellow is also a dominant color in an exceptionally luminous work (with a much less somber and conventional rendering of light than any of Vermeer's previous extant works). Depicting white walls was a challenge for artists in Vermeer's time, with his contemporaries using various forms of gray pigment. Here

14637-499: Was no overall Dutch term equivalent to "genre painting" – until the late 18th century the English often called them "drolleries". Some artists worked mostly within one of these sub-types, especially after about 1625. Over the course of the century, genre paintings tended to reduce in size. Though genre paintings provide many insights into the daily life of 17th-century citizens of all classes, their accuracy cannot always be taken for granted. Typically they show what art historians term

14760-572: Was principally a portraitist, but also painted genre figures of a portrait size early in his career. A stay in Haarlem by the Flemish master of peasant tavern scenes Adriaen Brouwer , from 1625 or 1626, gave Adriaen van Ostade his lifelong subject, though he often took a more sentimental approach. Before Brouwer, peasants had normally been depicted outdoors; he usually shows them in a plain and dim interior, though van Ostade's sometimes occupy ostentatiously decrepit farmhouses of enormous size. Van Ostade

14883-498: Was the most prosperous nation in Europe and led European trade, science, and art. The northern Netherlandish provinces that made up the new state had traditionally been less important artistic centres than cities in Flanders in the south. The upheavals and large-scale transfers of population of the war, and the sharp break with the old monarchist and Catholic cultural traditions, meant that Dutch art had to reinvent itself almost entirely,

15006-487: Was the most successful. Gerard de Lairesse (1640–1711) was another of these, before falling under heavy influence from French classicism, and becoming its leading Dutch proponent as both artist and theoretician. Nudity was effectively the preserve of the history painter, although many portraitists dressed up their occasional nudes (nearly always female) with a classical title, as Rembrandt did. For all their uninhibited suggestiveness, genre painters rarely revealed more than

15129-516: Was the romantic Italianate landscape, typically in more mountainous settings than are found in the Netherlands, with golden light, and sometimes picturesque Mediterranean staffage and ruins. Not all the artists who specialized in these had visited Italy. Jan Both (d. 1652), who had been to Rome and worked with Claude Lorrain , was a leading developer of the subgenre, which influenced the work of many painters of landscapes with Dutch settings, such as Aelbert Cuyp. Other artists who consistently worked in

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