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# Vermeer the Movie, Coming Soon
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/vermeer-the-movie-coming-soon/
- Published: 2013-08-05T16:46:57.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:45:13.000Z
- Description: The painter Johannes Vermeer is known for his incredible treatment of light and the almost photographic realism of his 17th-century scenes. How did he do it without the use of a camera, which was invented some 150 years later? That was the question driving Texas man Tim Jenison when he went on a que
- Author: Jillian Steinhauer
- Tags: News, Vermeer, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![Johannes Vermeer, "A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman" (c. 1658), oil on canvas, 66.3 x 76.5 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin (via Web Gallery of Art)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/08/vermeer-drinking.jpg)

Johannes Vermeer, “A Lady Drinking and a Gentleman” (c. 1658), oil on canvas, 66.3 x 76.5 cm, Staatliche Museen, Berlin (via Web Gallery of Art)

The painter Johannes Vermeer is known for his incredible treatment of light and the near-photorealism of his 17th-century scenes. How did he do it without the use of a camera, which was invented some 150 years later? That was the question driving art layman and Texan entrepreneur Tim Jenison when he went on a quest to understand the artist and his art. Jenison’s journey was captured on film by Teller, of the magic act [Penn & Teller](http://www.pennandteller.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), and will be released as a documentary next year by Sony Pictures Classics, [Deadline](http://www.deadline.com/2013/07/tims-vermeer-documentary-teller-sony-classics/?ref=hyperallergic.com) reports.

*Tim’s Vermeer*, as the film is titled, follows Jenison in his decade-long attempt to piece together Vermeer’s technique and achievements with only 17th-century technology. He travels to Vermeer’s hometown of Delft, Holland; to Yorkshire to meet artist David Hockney, who’s a proponent of the theory that Vermeer used a camera obscura for his compositions; and to Buckingham Palace, to see the Vermeer painting kept there. Jenison is an inventor himself, having founded a company called NewTek in 1985, which makes video and imaging software for computers. (His [NewTek bio](http://www.newtek.com/index.php?option=com%5Fcontent&view=article&tmpl=component&id=167&TB%5Fiframe=1&width=600&height=440&ref=hyperallergic.com) calls him “the visionary force behind the desktop video revolution.”)

Given its combined subject matter, it’ll be interesting to see whether the movie ends up more of a tale about Jenison — a kind of Errol Morris–inspired eccentric personality doc — or about Vermeer, in the vein of populist art history. We’ll hope for some kind of cross between the two, with the added flair of Teller’s sharp, wordless magic.