Vermeer's window light, painted by hand

Why Vermeer

Vermeer painted small, and most reproductions ignore that at the room's expense

Nearly all of the thirty-odd surviving Vermeers are under a metre, and that modest scale is part of how they work.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is about 44 by 39 centimetres. The Milkmaid is not much bigger. These are pictures meant to be looked at from a pace away, and blown up to two metres a quiet moment starts behaving like advertising. Hand-painted in oil at a sensible size you keep what matters: the thick dots of lead-white highlight on bread and brass, the soft edges, the slight ridges you can see raking across the surface in side light.

Vermeer's light almost always falls from the left. Hang the painting so its painted light agrees with the real light in the room and the shadows stop arguing with each other. Sixty by eighty, or ninety by seventy for the room scenes, centred around 145 centimetres. Warm walls beat cool ones: putty, mushroom, deep olive. Against a blue-white wall the ultramarine and ochre go flat and grey. Keep it off a wall that takes direct afternoon sun.

How your painting is made

1. Choose the size and finishSeven standard sizes from 60 × 50cm to 200 × 135cm. Stretched ready to hang, rolled, or one of our frames. The size guide on every painting shows it to scale.
2. Painted to order, by handA university-trained artist paints your piece in oils on canvas, working from the original. Two to three weeks at the easel, then drying time.
3. Stretched, framed, checkedGallery-wrapped or framed in our workshop, then photographed and checked before it leaves.
4. Delivered free, Australia-wideMade to order in 21 to 28 days, then tracked to your door. Thirty-day money-back guarantee if it isn't what you hoped.