As a sign of those in domestic service, and the poor when working on the land, worn by those in the kitchen, even the men, and protecting their bodies when at work.
Vermeer
From the end of the Thirty Years’ War, settlement of Cape Colony, the United East India Company as the largest in the world with a private army of 10,000, Vermeer’s Milkmaid, to invasion by France and decline in 1672.
A man furtively making off with two loaves, Vermeer’s Milkmaid, baking bread in rural Sweden, a traditional baking oven, and glistening alongside mackerel and glassware.
A stolen painting of a concert, a girl with a pearl earring, ladies with a maid and writing a letter, an astronomer and a geographer.
Finding form with his famous compositions of figures lit by daylight from windows on the left. His use of maps, curtains, and his unique depth of field effects.
Washerwoman below stairs, a kitchen maid, haggling in the market, selling fish door-to-door, pouring milk, farming families, and drinking.
A woman spinning in front of her bed, a view of a street, a waterfront, marketplace, boats on the river, canals, windmills, a sandy beach, clouds, and frozen rivers – everyday life in the Golden Age.
Painting captions give information you’d never get from looking at an image, and that in turn tells you even more. This series looks beyond mere images at the media behind them.
Originally extracted from the madder plant, and turned into a pigment by laking, its colour could fade within months. Later purified to alizarin it proved no better, and is now used as a measure of non-lightfastness.
Maids toiling at food preparation and washing clothes in the sculleries and utility rooms in the basement. Among them is Vermeer’s Milkmaid, and some of Degas’ working women.
The Eclectic Light Company 