Vermeer: A life lost and found

By Andrew Graham-Dixon

by Pete Duckworth 12th June 2026

I happened to see the programme for this year’s Stratford Literary Festival. I’m not much of a reader but I was drawn to a talk by Andrew Graham-Dixon about Vermeer. With a grade ‘C’ in A-Level Art, I’m no art historian or connoisseur. But I had picked up that the only thing we know about Vermeer is that nobody knows much about Vermeer. He painted only about thirty-five pictures, and no drawings survive. How then could someone give an hour-long talk, let alone write a 300-page book, about the man’s life? More pertinently to readers of the Friend: why is Vermeer and his work relevant to Quakers today?