As the style he is most famously known for, Vermeer's genre paintings feature scenes of everyday life portrayed using an expert understanding of light within interiors. Many art historians also believe that Vermeer worked with the use of a "camera obscura" during this middle period. Although there is no historical or physical evidence to support this idea, the aid of this device certainly explains the distinctly realistic quality of light and shadows in Vermeer's works. As just a darkened box with a converging lens and a viewing screen on either end, the camera obscura would have aided Vermeer in creating photographic-looking paintings, and helping to portray correctly light and reflections, shadow, scale and precision.

In his final years as an artist, Vermeer continued to create genre paintings, but his style became more abstract, focusing more than ever on texture and color patterns of objects. As expected, this mirrored the techniques of popular Dutch art during the 1670s and later. The features of Vermeer's images became more geometric and linear, and even his signature subtle light portrayal was replaced by defined divisions of light and shadow.

Vermeer's Genres

 

Although there are aspects of Vermeer that are recurring throughout all three of his artistic periods, some characteristics of his paintings are unique to each of his styles.