Johannes Vermeer valuation
About thirty-five paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring among them, and the most famous forgeries of the twentieth century.
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) spent his life in Delft, where he was a member of the painters' guild and also dealt in pictures.
What a work by Johannes Vermeer is worth
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Bio
Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) spent his life in Delft, where he was a member of the painters' guild and also dealt in pictures. He painted slowly, mostly quiet interiors in which one or two figures read, write, pour milk or play music by a window, and two views of his town; the View of Delft and Girl with a Pearl Earring are in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and The Milkmaid is in the Rijksmuseum. Only about thirty-five paintings are accepted as his. He was little known outside Delft until the French critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger championed him in the 1860s, and the Rijksmuseum's exhibition of 2023 drew record crowds.
Almost every 'Vermeer' offered privately is a copy, a later imitation in his manner or a reproduction; only one painting accepted as his has been sold at auction in the past century. His fame made him a target for forgers, most notoriously Han van Meegeren, who sold invented Vermeers to collectors and museums in the 1930s and 1940s and was exposed after the war. What does come to market with real merit is the work of his Delft contemporaries, such as Pieter de Hooch, and of the later painters who imitated his interiors, where the question is attribution and condition rather than his name.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
