Hendrick Ter Brugghen

William Buchanan (1781-1863), Edinburgh;
By descent to Mrs. Alexandra Morewood, his granddaughter;
Her sale, London, Sotheby's, 16 March 1966, lot 65, for £700 to Tinsley;
Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Gentleman"), London, Sotheby's, 21 March 1973, lot 33, for £10,000 to Zahn;
Art market, London, 1973;
Roger T. Street Esq., Bournemouth;
His sale, New York, Sotheby's, 17 January 1986, lot 78;
With Newhouse Galleries, New York;
With Rafael Valls and Colnaghi, London, 1987-90;
Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 17 January 1991, lot 77;
Acquired by the present owner in January 2003.

Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, on loan 1981-85;
Maastricht, Rafael Valls and Colnaghi, The European Fine Art fair, 1987;
Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 29 November 2003 - 24 February 2004; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria 11 March - 30 May 2003, Darkness and Light; Caravaggio and his World, no. 15, pp. 108-109;
London, Robilant & Voena, The International Caravaggesque Movement: French, Dutch and Flemish Caravaggesque Paintings from the Koelliker Foundation, 2005.

B. Nicolson, 'Second Thoughts about Terbrugghen', in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CII, no. 692, October 1960, p. 469;
B. Nicolson & C. Wright, "Georges de La Tour et La Grande-Bretagne", in La Revue du Louvre, no. 22, 1972, pp. 137-138, reproduced fig. 2, as datable to 1624-7;
A. Ottani Cavina, "La Tour all'Orangerie e il suo primo tempo Caravaggesco", in Paragone, no. 273, 1972, p. 11;
B. Nicolson, "Terbrugghen since 1960", in E. de Jongh (ed.), Album Amicorum J.G. Van Gelder, The Hague 1973, p. 241;
B. Nicolson, "Caravaggio and his Circle in the British Isles", in The Burlington Magazine, vol. CXVI, no. 859, October 1974, p. 60 (as in the collection of R.T.C. Street, Bournemouth);
B. Nicolson and C. Wright, Georges de La Tour, London 1974, pp. 27-28, 192;
B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979, p. 100;
B. Nicolson (rev. by L. Vertova), Caravaggism in Europe, vol. I, Turin 1989, p. 194, reproduced vol. III, fig. 1163;
A. Brejon de Lavergnée, "Le Caravaggisme en Europe: A propos de la réédition du Nicolson", in Gazette des Beaux-Arts, no. 122, 1993, p. 211;
J.J. Luna, Los músicos de Georges de La Tour, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, Museo del Prado 1994, p. 73;
W. Prohaska, Darkness and Light; Caravaggio and his World, exhibition catalogue, Sydney 2003, no. 15, pp. 108-109;
J. Bikker, in The International Caravaggesque Movement: French, Dutch and Flemish Caravaggesque Paintings from the Koelliker Foundation, exhibition catalogue, London 2005, pp. 30-3, reproduced;
L.J. Slatkes & W. Franits, The Paintings of Hendrick Ter Brugghen, Amsterdam/Philadelphia 2007, p. 205, cat. no. A83, reproduced plate 82.  

"The following condition report has been provided by Sarah Walden, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a new lining and stretcher, and has also been recently restored. There are no accidental damages. The head is in beautiful condition, as are most of the areas with denser paint, especially those containing white lead such as the white drapery, and highlights elsewhere. The more thinly painted shadows and especially the darks, for instance the back of the violin or the depths of the folds, have been fairly extensively strengthened. The background also has widespread surface retouching, and under UV cosmetic touches can be seen almost throughout, possibly superfluous titivation. The signature is worn and strengthened. However the vigour and decisiveness of the original brushwork is well preserved above all in the head but also to a great extent throughout the figure. This report was not done under laboratory conditions."
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Although the signature and a possible date are now only partly legible, Franits¹ has dated this painting to circa 1626. Nicolson² believed the calligraphic 'f', often used by Terbrugghen (for fecit), to be part of the last digit of a date and interpreted it as a '7', thus dating the picture to 1627. The presence of this signature indicates, as Franits argues, that this was probably the prime version of the composition.

A characteristic work from his final years, this jocular depiction of a drunken violinist, his nose reddened with drink and his teeth brown with age and abuse, is one of Terbrugghen's most boisterous works, abounding with energy and gusto. Gerrit van Honthorst's 1623 Merry fiddler³ is probably the first of this type of exuberant musician portraits produced by the Utrecht school, and it instigated the production of a profusion of such works throughout the 1620s, by Terbrugghen, Dirck van Baburen and others; see, for example, Terbrugghen's  Singing Male Lute Player in the Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart,⁴ which shares the same model as this work, or the lost Violinist with a glass, known today via an engraving made by Theodor Matham,⁵ which is the most comparable of the group to the present work in terms of both the pose and dress of the sitter, as well as the props used.

1. See under Literature.
2. See under Literature.
3. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum. See J.R. Judson, R.E.O. Ekkart, Gerrit van Honthorst, Doornspijk 1999, pp. 190-91, cat. no. 241, reproduced fig. 138.
4. Franits, pp. 194-5, cat. no. A78, reproduced plate 77.
5. Idem, pp. 275-6, cat. no. L38, reproduced fig. 73.