Rediscovery and legacy
Which famous 20th century artist was an admirer of Vermeer?
Johannes Vermeer
For two centuries after Vermeer's death, his works were appreciated by a number of connoisseurs in Holland—although attributed in many cases to better-known artists such as Metsu or Mieris—but were largely overlooked by art historians. The Delft master's modern rediscovery began about 1860, when the German museum director Gustav Waagen saw "The Art of Painting" in the Czernin gallery in Vienna, and recognized as a Vermeer the work which was at that time attributed to Pieter de Hooch. Research by Théophile Thoré-Bürger culminated in the publication in 1866 of his catalogue raisonné of Vermeer's works in the "Gazette des Beaux-Arts". Thoré-Bürger's catalogue, which drew international attention to Vermeer, listed more than seventy works by Vermeer, including many he regarded as uncertain. The accepted number of Vermeer's paintings today is thirty-four. Upon the rediscovery of Vermeer's work, several prominent Dutch artists, including Simon Duiker, modelled their style on his work. Other artists who were inspired by Vermeer include the Danish painter Wilhelm Hammershoi and the American Thomas Wilmer Dewing. 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 now-famous surrealist experiments. Dali also immortalized the Dutch Master in "The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table", 1934. Han van Meegeren was a 20th-century Dutch painter who worked in the classical tradition. Motivated by a blend of aesthetic and financial reasons, van Meegeren became a master forger, creating and selling many new 'Vermeers' before being caught and tried.