All About The Glass of Wine by Johannes Vermeer

Title of Artwork: “The Glass of Wine”

Artwork by Johannes Vermeer

Year Created 1658-1660

Summary of The Glass of Wine

Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer painted The Wine Glass (also known as Het glas wijn) in 1660 and now hangs at Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie. Two people, one sitting and one standing, are drinking in an inside setting. Delft School genre painting was created in the late 1650s by Pieter de Hooch and is evident in this work. It has a brightly lit and expansive interior, but its architectural space is extremely defined. Instead of being placed in the foreground or background, the figures in this painting are placed in the centre-ground of the scene.

All About The Glass of Wine

According to critic Walter Liedtke, “No examination of artistic traditions can imply the overwhelming beauty and astonishing polish of a painting like The Glass Of Wine, which may be considered one of Vermeer’s earliest totally mature works”.

De Hooch’s A Dutch Courtyard serves as the inspiration for the concept of a group of people drinking at a table and the depiction of a woman sipping from a glass. While De Hooch’s work is characterised by a more rustic and edgy atmosphere, Vermeer’s depiction of the inside is significantly more refined and upscale. Tablecloth, golden frame, and coat of arms under stained glass all hint at a more affluent environment.

There is a possibility that the image depicts a courting, although the roles played by the two people involved are not immediately apparent. It’s almost as if he’s trying to get the woman intoxicated, since once she’s finished her glass of wine, he pours her another one. In addition to musical notebooks, the cittern is resting on a chair in the living room. The stained glass window, however, depicts Temperance, heightening the tension in the situation.

By comparison with his earlier works, The Wine Glass has a much more subdued brushwork with large smooth contours for the faces and clothing of his figures. The artist only used beautifully detailed, linear brush strokes on the tablecloth and the window glass. At the period, Vermeer was not the only Dutch artist seeking to perfect De Hooch’s ideas; works by Jan Steen, Gerard Ter Borch, and Frans van Mieris the Elder also show a developed technique.

Other Vermeer paintings can be seen in the composition of this one. Two men are seen in The Girl with the Wine Glass (1659–1660), but like The Wine Glass, she is seated at a table with a glass of wine, and the tiled flooring and stained-glass windows are quite similar in both paintings. An early Vermeer, A Girl Asleep, features the same wine pitcher (1657).

For Vermeer, the Wine Glass is a transitional piece. “It lacks the convivial ease, the ingratiating creativity,” says art critic Lawrence Gowing, comparing the work to Gabriel Metsu’s The Duet.

Information Citations

En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.