The Concert by Hendrick ter Brugghen was created in 1626. The painting is in National Gallery London. The size of the work is 99,1 x 116,8 cm and is made of oil on canvas.
About the Work
We seem to have crept up on this small group of musicians. They turn towards us, apparently only just aware of our presence, though we’re within touching distance. A highly focused light source creates sharp highlights, intense shadows and a sense both of drama and intimacy.
Dramatic lighting effects like this are now common in art, films and photography. But in the 1620s, when this painting was made, it was a revolutionary way for artists to depict the world. The man responsible for this revolution was Michelangelo Caravaggio. Between about 1597 and 1607 this radical young painter transformed the art scene in Rome, then the capital of the art world, and his influence quickly spread all over Europe.
Ter Brugghen was the first important Dutch painter to bring Caravaggio’s ideas back to Holland. He had left Utrecht for Rome as a young trainee artist in 1604, aged about 16, when Caravaggio was at the height of his fame. We don’t know whether ter Brugghen met him but he certainly saw his paintings, and those of the many other artists in Rome who were copying and adapting his ideas. Read more in National Gallery London
About the Artist
Hendrick Jansz ter Brugghen (or Terbrugghen) (1588 – 1 November 1629) was a Dutch painter of genre scenes and religious subjects. He was one of the Dutch followers of Caravaggio – the so-called Utrecht Caravaggisti. Along with Gerrit van Hondhorst and Dirck van Baburen, Ter Brugghen was one of the most important Dutch painters to have been influenced by Caravaggio.
No references to Ter Brugghen written during his life have been identified. His father Jan Egbertsz ter Brugghen, originally from Overijssel, had moved to Utrecht, where he was appointed secretary to the Court of Utrecht by the Prince of Orange, William the Silent. He had been married to Sophia Dircx. In 1588, he became bailiff to the Provincial Council of Holland in The Hague, where Hendrick was born. Read more in Wikipedia
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