When I think of Vermeer, I am reminded of colourful paintings with his signature cornflower blue and yellow palette. He gave us a window into the domestic lives of Dutch families, from the simple milkmaid to the wealthy merchant; all rendered in exquisite and fine detail.

For over a hundred years, art historians have suggested that this Dutch master used the camera obscura (literally meaning ‘veiled chamber’) as a visual aid to creating such accurate scenes in his paintings. A little later on, the Baroque rococo painter Caneletto and Francesco Guardi used the camera obscura to render magnificent precision to their landscape’s perspective and detail. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great 18th century British painter, also owned a camera.

The camera obscura was a precursor to the photographic camera in the early 19th century, and it’s interesting to see such artists’ connection to photography in their works of art, even if the fully fledged photographic camera would arrive two hundred years later. Vermeer, for example, displays photographic perspective and optical illusion in his paintings.

Take a closer look at Girl with Red Hat (above, right-hand side): look at the highlights of lustre reflected in the brass lion heads of the subject’s chair. The polished brass is illuminated by light streaming through the window from the right. Science tells us that it should be rectangular or square in shape, since a highlight takes the shape of the light source that it reflects (the window). However, you’ll see that the lion heads on the chair are in fact true circles, akin to ‘circles of confusion’. It has been suggested that Vermeer is imitating accidental effects of slightly unfocussed optical lights. The effect is an optical illusion. Take a step back and you’ll also see the painting seems to be in soft focus, with a slight haze. Doesn’t this remind you out of slightly out of focus photograph? In other paintings, like Officer and Laughing Girl (above, left-hand side), the photographic scale and perspective is evident. 

This was recently explained by top expert in Vermeer and the camera obscura, Prof. R. Steadman.

It’s tantalizing to think that the camera obscura may well have formed an important aid to such artists and how they inadvertently created photographic paintings. I’m suddenly reminded of Gerhard Richter’s so-called ‘photo-paintings’. It seems that this interplay between photography and painting has been present since the 17th century….