View of Houses in Delft known as The Little Street

Johan Vermeer

Contemporary-Art.org
Keywords: ViewHousesDelftknownStreet

Work Overview

View of Houses in Delft (The Little Street)
Gezicht op huizen in Delft, bekend als 'Het straatje'
Artist Johannes Vermeer
Year 1657–1658
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 54.3 cm × 44 cm (21.4 in × 17 in)
Location Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam


The Little Street (Het Straatje) is a painting by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, executed c. 1657–58. It is exhibited at the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, and signed on the left hand corner below the window "I V MEER".


The painting is made in oil on canvas, and it is a relatively small painting, being 54.3 centimetres (21.4 in) high by 44.0 centimetres (17.3 in) wide.


The painting, showing a quiet street, depicts a typical aspect of the life in a Dutch Golden Age town. It is one of only three Vermeer paintings of views of Delft, the others being View of Delft and the now lost House Standing in Delft.[3] This painting is considered to be an important work of the Dutch master.[4]


Straight angles alternate with the triangle of the house and of the sky giving the composition a certain vitality. The walls, stones and brickwork are painted in a thick colour, that it makes them almost palpable.


Vermeer achieved the realistic depiction of the surfaces with the masterful application of a relatively limited number of pigments[5]. He employed red ochre and madder lake for the reddish-brown brick wall, the blue in the sky contains lead white and natural ultramarine. The green shutters and foliage are painted with azurite mixed with lead-tin-yellow[6].


While generally agreed to depict a contemporary street scene in 17th-century Delft, where Vermeer lived and worked, the exact location of the scene Vermeer painted has long been a topic of research and dispute, with studies arguing for the Voldersgracht, where the Vermeer Centre is located, or the Nieuwe Langendijk at the present-day numbers 22 to 26.[7] Later archival research based on the city's quay dues register, which gives detailed measurements of all houses and passageways at the time along the canals of Delft, has resulted in the conclusion that the site is the Vlamingstraat, a street with a narrow canal, at the present-day numbers 40 and 42.[8]


The property on the right in the painting belonged to Vermeer’s aunt, Ariaentgen Claes van der Minne. She had a business selling tripe, and the passageway beside the house was known as the Penspoort , or Tripe Gate. Vermeer’s mother and sister also lived on the same canal, diagonally opposite.


This is an unusual painting in Vermeer’s oeuvre, and remarkable for its time as a portrait of ordinary houses. The composition is as exciting as it is balanced. The old walls with their bricks, whitewash, and cracks are almost tangible. The location is Vlamingstraat 40–42 in Delft. Vermeer’s aunt Ariaentgen Claes lived in the house at the right, with her children, from around 1645 until her death in 1670.


Gezicht op huizen in Delft, bekend als 'Het straatje'. De gevels van enkele huizen aan een straat in Delft. Tussen de huizen een steegje waar een vrouw over een wastobbe gebogen staat. In de openstaande deur van het huis rechts zit een vrouw te handwerken, links voor het huis op de stoep twee spelende kinderen.


-------------------------
In the 350 or so years since Johannes Vermeer captured the everyday 17th-century Delft scene of The Little Street, one question has remained: where is it? Now a leading Dutch art historian says he knows.


The answer, according to Frans Grijzenhout, professor of art history at Amsterdam University, came from trawling through detailed contemporaneous records kept by the city in the southern Netherlands. These allowed him to pinpoint the only houses of the time that could match Vermeer’s famous scene, even though very little of them remains.


So significant is the apparent discovery about one of only two surviving outdoor scenes by Vermeer, better known for his intimate portraits of domestic life, that it is the basis for an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which owns the painting. The exhibition will, fittingly, transfer to Delft’s Museum Prinsenhof next year.


“The answer to the question as to the location of Vermeer’s The Little Street is of great significance, both for the way that we look at this one painting by Vermeer and for our image of Vermeer as an artist,” said Pieter Roelofs, curator of 17th-century paintings at the Rijksmuseum.


While various theories had been suggested for the location of the painting over the years, Grijzenhout was the first researcher to consult an arcane document from 1667, about a decade after the work was painted.


Officially known as De legger van het diepen der wateren binnen de stad Delft, or the ledger of the dredging of the canals in the town of Delft, it recorded how much tax various house owners had to pay for dredging their local canal and maintaining the quay. As part of this, it detailed the width of each house and their associated passageways, accurate to within 15cm.


Grijzenhout’s research found that on the north side of Vlamingstraat, a narrow canal in eastern Delft, sat two houses of about 6.3 metres wide, with a pair of adjacent passageways about 1.2 metres wide. Correlating this with other archive materials about gardens and the position of houses, Grijzenhout concluded that nowhere else in Delft at the time matched the painting.


The original houses are long gone, although one passageway remains. In their place sit numbers 40 and 42 Vlamingstraat, built in the late 19th century.


The research found that in Vermeer’s picture, the house on the right belonged to the painter’s widowed aunt, Ariaentgen Claes van der Minne, who provided for her five children by selling tripe. The passageway adjoining the home was known as the Penspoort, or Tripe Gate.


A Rijksmuseum statement added: “We also know that Vermeer’s mother and sister lived on the same canal, diagonally opposite. It is therefore likely that Johannes Vermeer knew the house well and that there were personal memories associated with it.”