Tim's Vermeer Page #3

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to recreate, as closely as possible,

the conditions that Vermeer

was working with.

Back then you couldn't just run down

to the paint store

and pick up a tube of paint,

so Tim had to learn how to grind

and mix the pigments,

which I'm now talking about

something I know nothing about,

but of grinding the pigments

and adding in the oil

and however you make paint.

If it were left to me to make paint,

there would be no paint.

I also learnt how to make lenses.

I couldn't use a modern lens,

they're too good.

So I had to build one.

So I had to make the form on a lathe,

I had to melt the glass,

I had to polish it with

various grades of abrasives,

just the way they made lenses

in the 17th century.

To be sure he was getting everything right,

Tim took some time off of work

to fly to Holland.

He visited Delft,

the city where Vermeer had lived,

and studied the light and the architecture.

So this is it, this is where Vermeer

painted those magical light pictures.

He learnt to read Dutch,

he consulted with experts,

measured furniture in museums,

and immersed himself in Vermeer's world.

All right, so move it in. Okay, good.

I would like to get one exactly like this.

Do you think you could make one?

That's possible, yes.

When he got back to San Antonio,

Tim rented a warehouse that faced North,

just like Vermeer's studio,

and invited Professor Philip Steadman

over from London

to look over his experiment.

While some believe that Vermeer

painted from his imagination,

Steadman found evidence that

Vermeer used optics.

Steadman is the author of Vermeer's Camera.

In this book, Steadman analyses six

of Vermeer's paintings

to determine the layout

of Vermeer's studio.

Then he uses geometry to figure out

where the lens in a camera obscura

would have to go

to match each painting's viewpoint.

Now he calculates the size of the

projection on Vermeer's back wall,

and compares that to the size

of the corresponding painting.

For all six, the sizes match exactly.

It doesn't seem like

that would happen by chance.

Pretty convincing evidence

that Vermeer used a lens.

Well, tell me about what you're doing.

Steadman's discovery fit perfectly

with Tim's mirror,

so now Tim set up a test

that would use both.

And this, we will make

an attempt at painting this.

- Okay.

- Using the mirror.

So, now let's go inside the booth.

Yeah.

He and Steadman would try to paint a jug

using his comparator mirror

inside a camera obscura,

as Tim thought Vermeer had done.

They take turns painting.

It doesn't matter who

does the brushstrokes,

the process is objective,

and any painter who uses it,

gets the same result.

David Hockney's book came out

just after mine.

What do you remember about the reaction?

There was quite a controversy around

both books, wasn't there?

Enormous, yes, yes.

There was a lot of upset, a really deep

anguish amongst the art historians.

The painters were relaxed.

They said, you know,

"This is a technology, fine, okay."

But there was something, a really deep

hurt amongst some of the art historians

which was to do with intrusion

of amateurs and crass rationalists

into the preserves of art history.

It was to do with a misunderstanding

of the nature of art

and cheating and genius,

and the idea that an optical method

is some sort of cheat,

because these are very accurate,

measured perspectives.

So, there are two ways you can do them.

You can produce them optically,

or you can set them up geometrically.

If you set them up geometrically,

you're using the standard methods,

it's a machine, it's an algorithm,

you apply the rules.

Why is that not cheating?

- Exactly.

- Strange, isn't it?

So, the only legitimate way to make a

painting is to just walk up to the canvas,

and alla prima paint it.

But the reason it isn't cheating

is that it's hard.

- Yes.

- It's geometry, it's mathematics.

- Well, this certainly is not easy.

- This is not easy, no.

- If Vermeer did this, it wasn't a time saver.

- No, indeed.

I can't comprehend that someone

could paint that from their imagination.

No. Of course not.

A human being is pretty

remarkable sometimes.

To get objects at their true sizes,

and to get all the kind

of luminous effects...

Painters can do miraculous things, it's

difficult to say, "This is impossible,"

but some things are more impossible

than others.

I was gonna go right off the edge there.

So.

- Great. Well, congratulations.

- And you.

Fantastic.

I want to think that

this simple, elegant device

is something that Vermeer could have used.

There's no doubt it's practical,

and it's simple.

You know, it's a plain mirror.

This is a 17th-century technology,

they knew all about mirrors,

and you can imagine him perhaps thinking

of something like what Tim has thought of,

but we know nothing from

a documentary point of view

of how Vermeer worked,

there are no descriptions by him,

by other people, there are no drawings...

We know very little about his life.

So the only real source of information

to answer a question like that

would be the paintings themselves.

Using Tim's device, it isn't easy,

but somehow it does turn you

into a machine.

You become a machine.

Was Vermeer a machine?

Maybe Vermeer was strong-minded enough

to think, "I'll become a machine".

That little picture of the jug

took Tim and Steadman

eight and a half hours to paint,

and Tim's method worked.

But they were painting in black and white,

and using powerful electric light

that wouldn't have been around

in Vermeer's day.

Would Tim's mirror work well enough

to paint The Music Lesson,

in full colour, in natural light?

To find that out Tim would need

Vermeer's room, and everything in it.

But museums don't loan stuff from the 1600s

to video engineers with a wacky hobby.

It would be nice if I could have hired

somebody to build all this

but it was kind of an interactive process,

you know, I had to first model the room

in LightWave 3D,

working from the painting to get

the dimensions and the shapes right.

Even though it was a lot of work,

it was just easier for me to do it,

because as I went I could make sure

that the furniture looked like

the furniture in the Vermeers.

But Tim is not a dressmaker.

Or a framer.

Or a carpenter. Upholsterer.

Glazier.

Builder of virginals,

which is a type of harpsichord.

Metalsmith.

Furniture maker.

Plasterer.

Tile layer.

Or a lens maker.

But he's not an artist either.

He used what he was, a technologist,

to help him become

all those things he wasn't,

so that he could build his room.

This is fun.

I mean, this is the real thing.

Is it safe for there to be that much smoke?

I don't know, I've never done this before!

Could it heat up and catch fire?

- Well, I guess. I don't know.

- Whatever!

It's kind of cool. Okay, here we go.

Okay, I got a problem

with the virginals leg.

It's supposed to be 36

and a half inches long,

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