1. Vermeer had a detailed, meticulous style, using extremely fine pigments to produce realistic paintings that play with light, reflection, and focus. He mostly painted interior scenes with normal people going about everyday activities while bathed in beautiful, perfect light.
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3. Vermeer was a master of colouristic effects, but like most 17th-century Dutch painters he worked with a surprisingly limited palette. In these four paintings Vermeer used ultramarine – by far the most expensive pigment available to artists – to the exclusion of all other blue pigments.
4. That’s the locations to find Vermeer’s paintbrush and paints in Genshin Impact. This is the first task of the Luhua Landscape quest. Completing this will lead you to further tasks. Similar to the Luhua Landscape, there are several other confusing quests in Genshin Impact.

Vermeer Paintbrush And Paints Near Me

How did Vermeer make the paint that was used in the Girl with a Pearl Earring? Like most 17th century Dutch artists, he used oil paint. Paint is made from pigments (coloured powders) mixed with a binding medium to make a thick, soft paste. The next few blog entries will be devoted to the pigments that Vermeer used to make different colours, and where they came from, but first, let’s hear about his oil.

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Oil change

The binding medium used to paint the Girl is linseed oil, made from the seeds of the flax plant. As I mentioned in the blog about canvas, flax stems were used to make linen for canvas, and the seeds of the plant (linseeds) were pressed to make oil.

Flax (back) / linseeds (front left) / linseed oil (front middle) / residue: linseed cake used for animal feed (front right). Image: Wikipedia

Linseed oil was identified in the Girl by analysing samples using Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS). Remarkably, GC-MS found that the oil in the background also contains a tiny amount of rapeseed oil. We don’t yet know much about the use of rapeseed oil in paintings, since it isn’t mentioned in historical recipes. It’s unlikely that Vermeer added this himself. Maybe the rapeseed was a contamination of linseed oil, as windmills were probably used to press oil from different sources.
In 17th century Netherlands, linseeds were commonly pressed using a windmill. At the Dutch oil mill Het Pink, you can see this process for yourself:
I bought some linseed oil from Het Pink to make paint, and left it in an open container on the windowsill for a year. Leaving oil to sit in the sun makes it a better binding medium for two reasons. The oil turns from a brownish to light yellow colour – which is better for the eventual colour of the paint. It also makes the oil thicker (more viscous).

Linseed oil from the Het Pink windmill. Left: just purchased / Right: After sitting in an open container in the sun for 1 year.
It seems that Vermeer bought – or maybe even made – a specific type of oil that allowed him to control how thick his paint was, and how fast it dried. Analysis with GC-MS showed that the oil was slightly heat-bodied. Heating oil to a high temperature (around 300°C, usually with added dryers) would have changed its painting properties, making it smoother, glossier, easier to paint with, and perhaps faster drying.

Drying

Linseed oil – unlike olive oil or vegetable oil – is a ‘drying oil’, meaning that it can set to form a stiff, rubbery film. When it is used to make oil paint, it dries at different rates depending on which pigment(s) are chosen.
If you’ve ever made an oil painting, you’ll know that it doesn’t dry right away. You can move the paint around with your brush for minutes, or even hours after you’ve applied it. The slow drying speed of oil paint allowed Vermeer to blend colours together in the Girl, and to manipulate his paint after he applied it. To achieve the subtle blending from light to shadow, for example the translucent skin on the edge of her cheek, he used a soft dry brush to blend the wet paint after he applied it.

Subtle transition from light to shadow in the Girl’s face. Photo: Margareta Svensson.
The slow drying speed of oil paint allowed Vermeer to blend colours together, and to manipulate his paint after he applied it. On the other hand, without the help of dryers, some coloured paints would take forever to harden. This would have made it impossible to layer one colour on top of another. Oil paints dry at different rates depending on which pigment(s) are chosen. In his 17th-century ‘painter’s manual,’ Theodore De Mayerne listed the drying times of different pigments, including: umber (2-3 hours), lakes (5-6 days), and that black paints will never dry unless they had been modified with a dryer. Samples from the Girl were analysed using SEM-EDX, which detected lead in some of his dark paints.
Vermeer let some layers dry thoroughly before he applied more paint on top. Most cross-sections show a distinct separation between layers of paint.

Vermeer Paintbrush And Paints Supply

Sample 11/4042, 400x magnification, UV. Thin lines (marked with arrows) between layers fluoresce in UV. Their composition is currently being investigated.

Oil + pigment = paint

Vermeer couldn’t have bought tubes of paint from an art supply store. He (or an assistant) ground the pigment and oil together on a stone slab using a muller to make a thick, soft paste. Different pigments required different amounts of oil, so preparing paint took training and practice.

Mullers and plate for grinding paints
Paint tubes weren’t patented until the 19th century. In Vermeer’s time, small quantities of prepared paint were kept in covered pots, or in animal bladders. When an artist was ready to use the paint, he could prick the bladder with a needle, and squeeze out a small amount onto his palette.

Paint kept in covered pot, and inside an animal bladder
Tomorrow’s blog will explore where Vermeer bought his painting materials.

References

• Oil mill Het Pink in Koog aan de Zaan, the Netherlands.
• Oil paint (Wikipedia)
• Gifford, E. Melanie and Lisha Deming Glinsman (2017) ‘Collective style and personal manner: Materials and techniques of high-life genre paintings.’ In: Vermeer and the masters of genre painting: Inspiration and rivalry, Adriaan E. Waiboer et al. (eds.), Yale University Press.

Acknowledgements

• Research into oil: Indra Kneepkens (University of Amsterdam)
• Binding medium analysis (GCMS 1994-96): W.G. Th. Roelofs (Centraal Laboratorium (now RCE)); (PY-TMAH- GCMS and DTMS, 1996): Inez D. van der Werf, Klaas Jan van den Berg and Jaap Boon (FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF))
• Binding medium analysis (PY-TMAH-GCMS and DTMS, 1994-96): W.G. Th. Roelofs (Centraal Laboratorium (now RCE)); Jaap Boon (FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF))
• SIMS analysis of thin layers: Anne Bruinen and Ron Heeren (Maastricht University)

The Badger Brush

Vermeer's technical evolution can be roughly divided into three periods. His first works are characterized by evident brushwork and rich impasto application of paint. The Italian term 'impasto,' indicates a thick, light-toned opaque layer of paint that leaves observable brush strokes. Passages painted with impasto acquire a vigor and forcefulness not achievable with flat layers of paint.

In the works of Vermeer's middle period, such as the Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, pictorial substance is hidden as much as possible so as to not destroy delicate chiaroscural transitions which define form and volume via optical, rather than tactile description. The face of the young woman in the Woman in Blue provides perfect example of the suffused contours and refined modeling which are characteristic of works of this period. In order to obtain such delicately transitions, Vermeer may have used a so-called badger brush.

The badger brush was standard equipment in the seventeenth-century workshop. In the 18th and 19th centuries it was widely used by portrait painter and were known as 'sweeteners' or 'softeners. In the 20th century, the badger brush has greatly diminished among artists since painters, who began to favor painterly styles, no longer found smoothness a desirable aesthetic quality.

The badger brush was used principally for two reasons. One, adjacent areas of wet paint could be blended creating impalpable transitions unattainable with rounded or fine tipped brushes. Two, glazes, or transparent layers of paint, could be applied uniformly over a monochrome underpainting without leaving even the slightest trace of the brush.

Vermeer Paintbrush And Paints Reviews

The badger brush was originally made with badger hairs which are softer than hog hair but not as flexible as sable. Badger hair comes from various parts of the world and is more readily available than most animal hair, although the quality varies greatly. Badger hair is thickest at the point, and relatively thin at the root, so it has a distinctive 'bushy' appearance. Badger hairs are disposed in the metal ferrule of the brush in such a manner as to create a flat fan-like form.

Curiously, the badger brush is not actually used to apply paint. Two different shades of paint are roughly applied to the canvas with a normal brush. While the paint is still wet, the badger brush is delicately maneuvered over two tones with a light, sweeping back and forth motion blending and removing all traces of paint relief. Due to its feather-like thinness, the badger brush does not really move appreciable quantities of paint. Once the brush has picked up too much paint on its tip, it must be cleaned with a solvent and dried thoroughly before it can be used again.

Vermeer Paintbrush And Paints

The badger brush may also used to spread out thin transparent layers of paint, called glazes, which are applied of over a dry, monochromatic underpainting. The glaze paint is usually composed of an inherently transparent paint with the addition of the highly viscous Stand Oil or Venetian turpentine and a bit of gum turpentine to improve flow. The superimposed glaze functions only as a coloring agent, similar to a thin sheet of transparent colored acetate placed over a monochrome photograph.