Question De Jour

What's your favourite website and why?

Mine is http://essentialvermeer.20m.com/index.html
I admire Vermeer's extraordinary talent with the brush. Johann Vermeer was a genius painter but what I think sets him apart from his contemporaries is how Vermeer seems to capture a moment hundreds of years before the invention of the modern camera. He uses light much like a flash and in that instant, a picture that seems impossible to record, is.

Vermeer manages to let the viewer in on a small private moment of his subjects. We know we have intruded; should beg pardon and shut the door, but we are compelled to continue to look. It's like looking at a car accident or opening someone else's mail, we know we shouldn't but do it anyways. It's a guilty pleasure.

I like many of his paintings, including Woman Holding a Balance, The Geographer, Girl Interrupted in Her Music, The Art of Painting, The Astronomer, but my favourite is of course, Girl with a Pearl Earring.