A Boy Violinist

About the Art

This is an example of a category of painting known as Dutch genre painting. Genre paintings depicted the daily life and pastimes of the Dutch middle class, often entertaining and sometimes with a moral message, indicating the brevity of human life and pleasure. A subgroup of genre painting was portraits of musicians, a subject at which ter Brugghen excelled. This figure holds the violin lower against the chest, as was typical at the time. He wears a fashionable yellow and blue doublet (a close-fitting jacket) with slashed sleeves and an ostrich-feathered cap.

Based in the Dutch city of Utrecht, ter Brugghen was associated with a circle of artists who had studied in Rome and were influenced by the painter Caravaggio (1571–1610). Known today as the “Utrecht Caravaggisti,” they drew on Caravaggio’s use of contrasting light and dark, models that convey an earthy realism and figures depicted from the waist up that bring the viewer closer to the subject in the painting.

FEATURED IMAGE
Hendrick ter Brugghen (Dutch, 1588–1629), A Boy Violinist, 1626, oil on canvas, 41 3/4 x 31 1/4 inches (106 x 79.4 cm). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Elton F. MacDonald, 1960.7