Forty Sandra Forty 
Vermeer 

Jan Vermeer is acknowledged as one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Yet in his lifetime he was largely unregarded and struggled to make a living for himself and his family. He lived and worked all his life in the prosperous Dutch town of Delft painting perfectly beautiful pictures of the inhabitants and their homes. Vermeer’s technique was faultlessly meticulous and consequently painstakingly slow. Fewer than forty of his paintings have survived, in fact he probably did not paint any more. Obscure within his own lifetime it wasn’t until two hundred years after his death that his true worth was recognized and his wonderful works were shown to the world. This book shows all of his paintings and explains some of the techniques and meanings of these apparently innocent paintings of Dutch small town life.