To celebrate the enormous success of the Rijksmuseum's Vermeer in Amsterdam, the day after it closes I would like to talk about The 'Other' Vermeers,  the ones which, for one reason or another, were not included in the sold-out show. 

One reason for doing this is that some of the more important paintings never made it to Amsterdam: The Music Lesson, from the British Royal Collection, for example, or The Art of Painting in Vienna, one of his most complex, intriguing and important works. In all nine paintings missed out, and so have suffered from a lack of attention in recent months. Given that the Rijksmuseum's curators catalogue a maximum of 37 surviving works (three of which are admittedly heavily debated), that is about a quarter of Vermeer's known paintings which were not seen.

A second reason to do this is quite simply the love of Vermeer. And whereas the Rijksmuseum's exhibition did not include any comparative materials, and so, as a conceit, neither did my introductory talk, in this case we have time include it, thus giving the nine remaining paintings a context, and exploring their significance in depth. We will see what relevance they have for the paintings which were exhibited, and discover what more they have to say about this remarkable master. I hope this talk will help to fill out our understanding of this remarkable master's work, and sum up all that has be learnt from what may well become known as 'the year of Vermeer'.