One of the most puzzling facets of Vermeer's oeuvre is its restricted dimension. Currently, there are roughly 35 paintings that are universally attributed to Vermeer by scholars.. Albert Blankert, one of the most reputable and cautious Vermeer scholars, wrote: "There is good reason to believe that Vermeer's artistic production was small. Three of his paintings are recorded in documents as property of the painter's widow. Twenty-one more are listed in the catalogue of an auction of paintings held in Amsterdam in 1696. Another five occur in auction catalogues from the end of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Remarkably enough, nearly all of these paintings can be identified. Moreover, all but a few of the thirty-odd paintings now regarded as autograph works by Vermeer are mentioned in these few sources. This provides strong evidence that the Vermeer's known today constitute nearly the entire oeuvre of the master."Albert Blankert, Vermeer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), 9.
John Michael Montias, who has analyzed every shred of historic evidence regarding Vermeer's art and life, has speculated that the total number of paintings executed between his first dated work, The Procuress (1656) and 1675, range approximately between forty and sixty, a truly paltry number if compared to the standard output, often counting into the hundreds, of Dutch painters of the Golden Age. Thus, Vermeer would have painted only two or three works a year, most likely, according to Montias, two highly finished works and one small painting of a lower price range.
On the other hand, renowned artists like Rembrandt, Frans Hals, and Jan Van Goyen produced works in the hundreds; in Van Goyen's case, more than one thousand paintings have survived. Vermeer's production, however, should be more fairly compared to those of artists who worked in a similar controlled manner and whose production would have been logically more limited such Gabriel Metsu, or Pieter de Hooch and specifically to the fijnschilders (fine painters), Gerrit Dou, Gerrit ter Borch and Frans van Mieris. While over a hundred paintings by artists like Metsu and De Hooch have survived, their collective outputs significantly exceed Vermeer's.
And while it is likely that Vermeer produced only a few works other than the 35, 36 or 27 which have survived, it is just as important to know for what reason he did so.
Technical Observations
Detail. Vermeer's paintings present a marked illusionist quality and a seemingly high degree of detail. But under close observation, more than the quantity of detail, it is the quality of detail that is most notable. When we have the opportunity to make side-by-side comparisons between works of Vermeer and of the fijnschilderen mentioned above, we are struck by the relative lack of detail in Vermeer's work. None of these painters every applied paint so broadly and so boldly as Vermeer did in his famous Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Dutch painters of the fijnschilder school, such as Gerrit Dou, Frans van Mieris and Gerrit ter Borch neglected no detail or tonal change. Their smooth brushwork, achieved by using tiny brushes and sometimes even magnifying glasses, meant that individual brushstrokes were often invisible to the naked eye, creating an almost photographic quality.In particular, the level of detail in Dou's work, which cannot be perceived in even the most accurate printed reproductions, nears the microscopic. It is said that when the artist was complimented on his skill in painting a broom no larger than a fingernail, he remarked that the broom was unfinished, he still had three days' work to do on it. No time was spared to ensure the maximum degree of illusionism and commercial success. For example, in Dou’s A Woman Playing a Clavichord (c. 1665), detail seems almost an end in itself. The individual knots of the hanging tapestry are rendered with painstaking precision. Each knot, painted with a thick dot of impasto so that it stands in relief, mimics the fabric’s rough texture. Each knot is meticulously spaced, maintaining consistent distance from its neighbors on the left and right.
Vermeer instead, especially in his mature works, took a different pictorial approach. Accuracy of tone and contour, rather than the methodic accumulation of descriptive elements and their minute description, sustain the illusion of reality. Vermeer's tonal approach is particularly evident in the deep shadows which are often flat and virtually unmodulated areas of paint. The shaded side of the woman's blue satin dress in Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, is a flat unmodulated shape of deep blue that is startling. Even more so is the level of absolute visual authenticity attained.Like Chardin, who, when asked how he painted, said that he kept putting on touches until the thing looked finished, Vermeer was always interested in the overall impact. Monet and Rembrandt, both accused of leaving their works unfinished, said the same thing as Chardin. On the other hand, for Van Mieris and Dou, detail was even more important than the whole. When the viewer walks away from their pictures, it is always a specific detail that is remembered rather than the composition, lighting, or sensation of space. Of all the fine interior painters, only Ter Borch and Metsu were able to subordinate detail for the sake of the whole, but surprisingly, Metsu did so only when he emulated the works of Vermeer. With Vermeer, every detail recedes as it would in nature, merging into the part to which it belongs, modestly waiting to be sought out, remaining unseen until it is looked for.
Nicola Costaras ("A Study of the Materials and Techniques of Johannes Vermeer," in Vermeer StudiesNicola Costaras, "A Study of the Materials and Techniques of Johannes Vermeer," in Vermeer Studies, eds., Vermeer Studies (Studies in the History of Art Series) (Washington, DC: National Gallery Washington, 1998), 145-167. provides convincing objective evidence that the artist probably worked with extended periods between painting sessions. Restorer Jørgen Wadum,Director of Conservation at Statens Museum for Kunst and former Chief Conservator of the Royal Cabinet of Paintings Mauritshuis in The Hague known for his work on Girl with a Pearl Earring and View of Delft, observed this: "One of the small women in the foreground of the View of Delft Vermeer painted gray vertical lines over so-called premature cracks in her black skirt. As this sort of drying of cracks in paint does not form overnight, Vermeer could therefore have applied this modest detail only after the painting had been sitting in his studio for a considerable amount of time. Elements like these prove that the timeframe he needed to reach the finished image was without limit—and not necessarily equivalent to the hours actually spend applying the paint."
Composition. Another factor that contributes to Vermeer's lengthy painting process is the paramount role that composition played in his work. Composition must not be confused simply with the number of elements placed more or less in the position where the artist found them in the real world, but rather, a thoughtful and meaningful ordering of those elements to achieve a desired artistic expression. Vermeer must have spent many long hours arranging and re-arranging the various objects he intended to represent even before he began the actual painting process. Both the objects' positions and the spatial interval between them, called negative space, are given equal expressive significance, which no other artist before or after Vermeer has achieved. X-ray images and neutron radiographs have revealed an impressive number of many major and minor corrections in Vermeer's compositions. It would seem that Vermeer was a contemplative painter who may have spent long hours meditating exact thematic and formal relationships.
Vermeer's Vision of Art
The technical and artistic complexities of Vermeer's art offer a satisfying explanation for his low output; however, they ultimately depend on a single guiding factor: Vermeer's vision of art. Although it is well known that he repeatedly drew inspiration from fellow genre painters he filtered their thematic inventions and technical findings through the light of his own experience. In Dutch art of the last quarter of the seventeenth century, Vermeer was, with the exception of Gerrit ter Borch, the only artist capable of infusing a sense of timeless dignity and moral gravity to his scenes of contemporary life which had been the prerogative of history painting. Luckily, Vermeer's lofty concept of painting was evidently shared by a few choice patrons (principally Pieter van Ruijven of Delft) and occasional clients from the social elite. John Montias believes that the relationship that Vermeer had with Van Ruijven (and with his wife Maria de Knuijt) went beyond the usual client/artist one.
More than one critic has advanced the idea that Van Ruijven played a decisive part in Vermeer's evolution as an artist). Not only did he guarantee the artist a degree of financial support and encouragement, he must have also have offered the artist entry into the world of discerning connoisseurs and powerful functionaries that constituted the highest end of the art scene of the art world in the Dutch Republic. Thus, Vermeer could develop freely his own artistic inclination differently from many other Dutch painters who were forced to produce great numbers of paintings while keeping an eye on the capricious moods of the art market. It may not be accidental that Vermeer died shortly after Van Ruijven, who had certainly bought the largest part of his artistic production. Paradoxically, it was Vermeer's own approach that was to limit the spread of his fame. By selling so few works to so few patrons located in a minor artistic center such as Delft, he had reduced drastically the possibility that his fame might spread in his own time.
Conclusion
While there are sound reasons which would lead us to believe Vermeer's output was only marginally larger than the 36 generally accepted paintings, there exists no valid evidence that might induce us to believe that Vermeer had a significantly larger output than that which has survived. Vermeer painted a restricted number of highly significant paintings for a few connoisseurs who shared the same vision of art.