Girl Reading Letter at Open Window by Vermeer Postcard

Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window by Johannes Vermeer, 1657-1659, is an oil on canvas painting of a young blonde woman reading a letter by her window, the red drapery drawn back. Before her is a still life of fruit on an ornate tablecloth. A long, ochre coloured curtain frames and brackets the right side of the composition, a device known in painting as repoussior. Johannes (Jan) Vermeer (1632 - 1675) was a Dutch master painter of interior genre scenes whose works were rediscovered in the 19th century. In carefully constructed, geometric compositions drawn in meticulous linear perspective, Vermeer explored the effects of light and colour across human figures, objects and textures in sunlit, domestic rooms, building upon the optical discoveries and 3D perspectival depth of Leonardo and the Renaissance. Both a painter and an art dealer, Vermeer slowly produced a few of his painstakingly executed, richly pigmented compositions per year, living entirely within his home city of Delft, eschewing the fame of his near contemporaries Rubens and Rembrandt that he achieved finally in the modern era.