Johannes Vermeer was a Dutch Baroque Period painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. During his lifetime, he was a moderately successful provincial genre painter, recognized in Delft and The Hague. Nonetheless, he produced relatively few paintings and evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death.
Vermeer's works were largely overlooked by art historians for two centuries after his death. The Delft master's modern rediscovery began about 1860 when German museum director Gustav Waagen saw "The Art of Painting" in the Czernin gallery in Vienna and recognized the work as a Vermeer.
Upon the rediscovery of Vermeer's work, several prominent Dutch artists modeled their style on his work. In the 20th century, Vermeer's admirers included Salvador Dalí, who painted his own version of "The Lacemaker" and pitted large copies of the original against a rhinoceros in some surrealist experiments. Dali also immortalized the Dutch Master in "The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table", 1934.
Visit www.johannesvermeer.org for more information about Johannes Vermeer's life and paintings.