Tim Paints a “Vermeer”

In the first few minutes of the documentary Tim’s Vermeer (2014), Tim Jenison admits that he is by no means a trained or skilled artist. And then comes the shocker: his first attempt at oil painting is a convincing recreation of Johannes Vermeer’s The Music Lesson (c. 1662–1665), or rather a high-resolution reproduction of it since the original work of art is tucked away in Buckingham Palace‘s collection. While this proclamation is the epitome of audaciousness, we soon learn that Jenison is indeed creative, and despite not being a seasoned artist, he is certainly artful. He is one of the most preeminent inventors of the twenty-first century, specializing in various fields of computer graphics, and has developed an influential and widely used three-dimensional modeling software program called LightWave 3D. He is also an aficionado of Dutch painting, which brings us to his bold attempt to recreate one of the most complicated and astonishing oil paintings from the canon of seventeenth century European art.

Avid readers of Artfully Learning know that thinking like an artist is a mindset that anyone can attain through employing artistic habits of mind to whatever endeavor they are involved with. The overarching benefit of honing our artistic thinking is gaining a profound ability to distinctly express ourselves, develop our craft (learning and strengthening tangible skills), engage and persist in the creative process (being flexible, exploratory and innovative when things do not initially work out), astute observation and sensory processing, a thirst for inquiry and a more replete understanding of the culture at large.

In addition to the aforementioned traits, these habits of mind expand the definitions of art and the role of an artist. Any action can be accomplished in the framework of art if it follows and interprets the aforementioned types of artful thinking. Tim Jenison becomes an artist in front of our very eyes, which is a treat, privilege and insightful development that is typically reserved for art educators. For this reason and more, I found Tim’s Vermeer to be an worthwhile art educational documentary.

At first I was skeptical about the direction this film would take. In this technocratic age where AI and other digital image generators make it easy for anyone to create highly detailed aesthetic compositions, I feared that Tim’s own prowess in computer technology and engineering would seek to eschew the ingenuity of professional artists. He makes a quip about Vermeer perhaps being more of an inventor than a painter. Co-filmmaker and narrator Penn Jillette even puts forth the idea of Vermeer being a magician (for those unfamiliar with Jillette, he is one part of the magician duo, Penn & Teller).

I was initially taken aback by two people outside of the art field calling Vermeer, who is arguably one of the most renowned and deft Dutch painters in history, anything other than a bona fide artist. But then again, many successful professional artists are simultaneously engineers, scientists and inventors too. Vermeer is an example of someone who had the multifaceted mindset and skills necessary to make breakthroughs in the field of art, while also contributing to technological and scientific innovations in the field of physics (i.e. optics).

Jenison manages to paint The Music Lesson with pristine attention to detail using a technological device and process he believes Vermeer used to achieve an incredible representation of color, form and perspective. Since Vermeer left no written or verbal account of his work, it has been left to others to try and understand his incredible sense of optics.

It has been suspected that he used a camera obscura and camera lucida to get highly precise positioning of light and accurate renderings of objects in his paintings. David Hockney, a contemporary British artist who deserves to be spoken in the same high regard as Old Masters like Vermeer, is a proponent of the aforementioned theory. This theory is described in his 2001 publication Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. In that same year, an architect named Philip Steadman published the book Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces, positing that many of Vermeer’s paintings had been painted in the same room and that the scale of the canvases suggests that they were painted from inside a camera obscura within the room. In this regard, Vermeer can actually be considered a proto-photographer and set designer in addition to being an innovative painter.

Jenison expands prior theories around Vermeer’s use of technology by hypothesizing that Vermeer used a camera obscura as well as a comparator mirror, a device somewhat similar to a camera lucida that can be used to seamlessly match color values by continuously comparing the reflection of the original image captured via the camera obscura with the paint he applies to the canvas. When the edge of the mirror appears to vanish he knows that he has correctly matched the hue, value and tone of the original source image on the canvas.

Jenison spent five years testing this theory by faithfully recreating the room Vermeer painted in and using the aforementioned tools to paint a strikingly similar rendition of The Music Lesson. While there is no definitive proof that Vermeer used these tools and methodology (there are very few historical narratives around his life and career overall), Tim does learn the truth about one thing: it takes an incredible amount of dedication, creativity and vision to make paintings like Vermeer did.

While an invention can make the process of painting more mechanical, a true artist has something that machines and technology do not, which is human intuition. This trifecta of self-discovery, self-expression and personal exploration enables artists (and anyone employing the artistic/studio habits of mind) to create art in a flexible manner that provides them with freedom to make and learn from their mistakes. After making and learning from a painterly mishap of his own at the film’s climactic end, Tim acknowledges the awesomeness of art and even refers to himself as an artist for the very first time.

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References, Notes, Suggested Reading: 

Hockney, David. 2001. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters, New York: Vicking Studio.

Steadman, Philip. 2001. Vermeer’s Camera: Uncovering the Truth behind the Masterpieces, New York: Oxford University Press.