A new drawing by Hendrick ter Brugghen

Leonard J. Slatkes

The recent appearance of a new drawing by the caravaggesque painter Hendrick ter Brugghen (fig. 1), part of the Badezou gift, musee de Rouen,! a study for the 1628 da ted , , De- mocritus2 (fig. 2), and the surprising results of an X-ray (fig. 3) of another Ter Brugghen picture, the c. 1623 Scene 01 Mercenary Love: Unequal Lovers (fig. 4), now in the Shearson Lehman Brothers collection, New Y ork, both contribute to our understanding of the role drawings played in the common workshop shared by Ter Brugghen and between about 1621 and the latter's death early in 1624, as well as later when Ter Brugghen worked independently. The new Rouen drawing is executed in black chalk with some heightening in white chalk on grey paper,3200 x 300 mm., and thus is very similar in technique to the two already known Ter Brugghen drawings, although it does lack the wash found in the other sheets and thus appears somewhat less finished. Interestingly enough, this new Ter Brugghen drawing has a traceable provenance, even though - or perhaps, because - it had always been attributed to Gerrit van Honthorst. Indeed, both of the other Ter Brugghen drawings were also originally attributed to Honthorst. Thus the Rouen drawing appeared in the 1900 Defer-Dumesnil sale,4 and again in the 1920 Y. Beurdeley sale. 5 Furthermore, in 1879 the sheet had been exhibited at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, no. 329, once again as Hont­ horst.6 To this already known history it is now possible to add that the Same work is almost certainly the Democritus drawing, described as being executed in black chalk with white highlights, in the auction van der Dussen, Amsterdam, Oct. 31, 1774, lot no. 734, once more described as by the hand of Honthorst. 7 Of the three drawings by Ter Brugghen which are now known to us two are studies for surviving paintings. Only the third sheet, a female Penorcon Player, in Hamburg,8 the most finished of the three works, can­ not be related to any known Ter Brugghen picture although the same female model does appear in several late paintings by the artist. Never­ theless, given the dearth of drawings from the hand of Ter Brugghen, this writer finds that it is highly unlikely that, as Judson suggested and Nicolson believed,9 the Hamburg sheet was originally intended as an independent work of art. Furthermore, the fact that a comparable picture has not survived should be seen as merely a matter of chance. Signifi­ cantly, female musicians are much rarer in UtJecht painting than male ones which may be related to the survival rate.

324 A new drawing by Hendrick ter Brugghen

1 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Democritus, drawing, Badezou gift. Musie de Rouen.

2 Hendrick ter Brugghen, Democritus, 1628. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum.

One of the important facts that emerges in connection with the Rouen Democritus and the -Dahlem Singing LuteplayerlO is that both draw­ ings can be related to known Ter Brugghen paintings for which there exist more than one autograph version.ll Additionally, both the Rouen and the Berlin-Dahlem sheets are unusually dose to their finished pictures suggesting that they are final drawn studies which were preserved in the studio so that they could be utilized for subsequent painted versions. As the drawing technique and the type of paper used are extremely dose in the Rouen and Berlin-Dahlem sheets, and the male model the same one who appears in a number of dated Ter

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