The Little Street (Het Straatje)

Johannes Vermeer

Oil on canvas

Rijksmuseum

This intimate oil painting depicts a quiet, sunlit street corner in Delft, showing two weathered brick house facades with stepped gables, a narrow passageway between them, and figures absorbed in everyday life — a woman sewing in a doorway, a maid washing laundry, and two children playing on the stoop. Vermeer renders the surfaces with extraordinary tactile realism, using thick impasto for the aged brickwork and a masterfully restrained palette of red ochre, natural ultramarine, and lead white to capture the textures of mortar, whitewash, and green shutters. Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675), the celebrated Dutch Golden Age master born and raised in Delft, is renowned for his luminous treatment of light and his meticulous observation of domestic life, producing only around 35 known paintings in his lifetime. This work is one of only two surviving outdoor cityscapes by Vermeer, making it exceptionally rare within his oeuvre, and it now hangs in the Gallery of Honour at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam — a timeless window into 17th-century Dutch life that brings warmth, serenity, and historical depth to any home.