Vermeer

The author

Lawrence Gowing (1918–1991) was that unusual figure, a serious painter who was also a major art historian and museum man — a Slade Professor, a gallery director, and a marked presence in British art despite a pronounced stammer. His whole method flowed from his practice: an "artist's eye" criticism grounded in patient visual scrutiny rather than documents, which he brought not only to Vermeer but to Cezanne, Turner, and Matisse. It is why his writing persuades painters.

The book

First published by Faber and Faber in 1952 — a compact but erudite essay on the whole oeuvre, followed by plates — and widely regarded as his masterwork. This University of California Press edition is the reprint (carrying additional material associated with Ernst Gombrich) that has kept the study in circulation.

How it has aged

Remarkably well. The art historian Svetlana Alpers called Gowing's text "the single best sustained piece of critical writing that exists on Vermeer," and it is still cited and treasured decades on. Later scholarship has added archival and technical findings — on the camera obscura, on Delft, on the art market — but as an act of looking, Gowing's essay has never really been surpassed.

For more context

On the optics debate, Philip Steadman's Vermeer's Camera; on the wider Dutch world, Svetlana Alpers's The Art of Describing.

Sources

• Lawrence Gowing (Dictionary of Art Historians)
• Vermeer, University of California Press edition
• Vermeer, 1952 text (Internet Archive)
• Faber first edition (Biblio)