Exhibition brings to light relationships between Vermeer and his contemporaries

More than 20 years after the legendary exhibition Johannes Vermeer, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, presents Vermeer and the Masters of Genre Painting: Inspiration and Rivalry. On view in the West Building from October 22, 2017, through January 21, 2018, the exhibition examines the artistic exchanges among Dutch Golden Age painters from 1650 to 1675, when they reached the height of their technical ability and mastery at depicting domestic life. Some 65 masterpieces by Johannes Vermeer and his contemporaries—including Gerard ter Borch, Gerrit Dou, Pieter de Hooch, Nicolas Maes, Eglon van der Neer, Caspar Netscher, and Jacob Ochtervelt—are grouped by theme, composition, and technique, thereby demonstrating how these painters admired, challenged, and pushed each other to greater artistic achievement. The paintings also reflect how these masters responded to the changing artistic climate of the Dutch Republic in the third quarter of