VERMEER VAN HAARLEM, Jan the Younger

Dutch painter and draughtsman, part of a Haarlem family of painters, son of Jan Vermeer van Haarlem the Elder. He was a pupil of his father and of Nicolaes Berchem. He probably visited Italy before entering the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1681. His pictures, for example Landscape with Flock (1677, private collection), display his father’s heavy green and yellow tonality, but his subject-matter, shepherds and their flocks in Italianate, and sometimes mountainous, settings, derives from Berchem. His work, like that of his friend Simon van der Does (c. 1653-1718) and that of Dirk van Bergen, constitutes a dilution, rather than a development, of Berchem’s style. He made numerous drawings, such as Landscape with Flock and Castle beside a Lake (1704; Hamburg, Kunsthalle), most of which include depictions of sheep. He drew in red or black chalk, often adding watercolour, and he usually signed and dated his work.