Details of Vermeer's Painting Technique

Painting a White Wall

In oil painting, the naturalistic rendering of a brightly lit wall, such as those found in the works of Pieter de Hooch or Vermeer, is a challenging undertaking. However, while De Hooch depicted his walls in a fairly rough and standardized manner, Vermeer experimented with a more refined and broader range of techniques as he had done with others of his preferred motifs (e.g., leaded windows, floor tiles, wall maps etc.). Vermeer's exceptional powers of observation and pictorial synthesis allowed him capture nuances of light, shade and texture in his depictions of walls that De Hooch either ignored or was unable to represent.

Why is rendering a simple white-washed wall in paint so difficult?

The reasons are complex and many. The human eye perceives a wide range of light intensities due to its ability to adapt to different lighting conditions. This adaptation means that in bright sunlight, what are actually various shades of gray can appear to us as uniform whiteness. Translating this nuanced perception into paint requires a deep understanding of value scales and how light works. Sunlight can have different color temperatures at different times of the day, affecting how we perceive the color of the wall. Our eyes can adjust to these variations, but it can be difficult to manually replicate these subtle changes using gray paint. Objects next to the wall can affect our perception of its color due to contrast effects. For instance, a white wall can appear darker if it is adjacent to a very brightly lit object. When painting, these contrast effects must be intentionally created.

The shifts in value (from light to dark) on a sunlit wall are often very subtle. It can be hard to discern and replicate these shifts because they do not just follow a linear pattern but change according to the wall's texture, the angle of the sun, and atmospheric conditions. Moreover, paint pigments are hopelessly limitated in terms of degrees of luminosity a compared to the range of light that can be perceived by the human eye. The brightest white paint might still not match the brilliance of sunlight on a white wall, and mixing grays to pure white paint can dull the vibrancy needed to suggest sunlight.

In Vermeer's walls, the broader left-to right chiaroscural variation immediately establishes the direction and intensity of the incoming light and how it gradually diminishes as it rakes obliquely the wall's surface. Nail holes, cracks, crevices, and other minor surface irregularities are recorded with discrete variations in the paint's tonal values. In some works, such details are literally depicted with darker and lighter paint, or by digging the stiff-bristled brush into the wet, light-toned paint exposing here and there the underlying darker ground.^{See Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter. These marks were termed "non semantic" by the art historian, Whitney Davis.}

Sometimes paint is used metaphorically. By piling up thick paint impasto in the lighter areas of the wall,^{The Milkmaid and The Art of Painting} the painter evoked not only the strength of the light which illuminates its surface but its crusty texture produced by repeated coating of lime which is necessary to maintain the walls clean, fully reflective and hygienic.Minor cast shadows, instead, were often painted with thin, semi-transparent layers of darker paint in order to convey their insubstantial nature. The contours, tones and shapes of the shadows cast by the windows, painting-within-paintings and maps hung upon the walls providing more precise information about the intensity and direction of the light as well as information about the morphological characteristics of the objects themselves.^{The double shadows cast by the frame of the London Lady Standing indicates light entered the room from two distant windows. The not-quite comprehensible double shadows of the mirror depicted in Gabriel Metsu's A Woman Reading a Letter with her Maid underline how carefully observed were those of Vermeer.}

The base hue of each wall, which is given by the relative coolness or warmth of the basic gray paint used to represent them, determines not as much the quantity of the light as its quality, or rather, its temperature. In the most successful renditions, it is possible to understand what time of day the painter intended to represent. For example, the bluish shadows and clean, light tones of the wall (and wall map) in the Officer and Laughing Girl denote cool morning light. The effect is further enhanced by the striking bluish tint of the shadows on the lady's face and of her white head covering. The frosty blues (painted with natural ultramarine pigment) of the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, which are insinuated in almost every part of the composition, speak of morning light as well.

On the other hand, the pearl-gray of the shadows cast by the background chair and the overall mute but warm gray in the wall of the Woman with a Pearl Necklace suggest afternoon light or an overcast day. The subdued ochres and brownish shadows of the night side of the lady's yellow jacket confirm the impression. In Vermeer's late works, the walls are handled with thinner layers of paint which show only faint relief and modeling. One of the principal characteristics which makes Vermeer's walls so real in comparison to those of his contemporaries is the correct matching of the wall's and tthe temperatures of the walls and the figures.