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| JOHANNES VAN BRONCHORST (Utrecht 1627 - Italy 1656 )
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| A Lady playing a Guitar on a Balcony
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Oil on canvas
49 ¿ x 41½ in. (126.8 x 105.4 cm.)
The subject and compositional style of A Lady playing a Guitar on a Balcony stems from the early seventeenth century Utrecht Caravaggisti tradition of musical companies arranged on balconies. These motifs can be seen widely in works by Gerrit van Honthorst and Jan van Bijlert and this tradition was subsequently popularised by Jan Gerritsz van Bronchorst and his son, Johannes (or Jansz). Jan Gerritsz van Bronchorst was a very productive painter of di sotto in su decorations where the perspective is adjusted to take into account a viewer looking up at the painting from below. Very probably these paintings would originally have been hung high up in dining or banqueting rooms to give the illusion of a minstrel’s gallery full of serenading musicians. The majority of these balcony scenes are composed of musical or drinking companies, however some are composed with a single figure either with or without a balustrade. Partly because of this reason and certain similarities in style, the oeuvre of Johannes van Bronchorst was all but forgotten by the eighteenth-century, and until the 1980s, many of his works were wrongly attributed to his father, Jan Gerritsz. van Bronchorst. The paintings that can be unquestionably attributed to Johannes van Bronchorst, can be provisionally only put at four of five in total, little, but enough to allow us to learn something of the personality and style of the painter. It is clear that his style and the compositional elements were influenced by his father, yet the details of his paintings show him to have a precocious talent that overtakes that of his father and mentor.
The compositional and subject matter similarities between the work of father and son are undeniable and have created much confusion over past centuries. Among the works most recently reattributed from father to son are Young Woman in the Centraal Museum, Utrecht and Aurora in The Wadsworth Atheneum, Connecticut. Nevertheless comparing our work with Jan Gerritsz van Bronchorst’s A Lady playing a Guitar (formerly with Rafael Vals, London and signed JvBronchorst 1650) one can see that the father’s painterly technique is less refined, despite the strong similarities in terms of the overall composition. When comparing The Young Woman in the Centraal Museum in Utrecht with the Colnaghi portrait there are distinct similarities between the smooth brush strokes and the elegant refinement of the sitters hands and physiognomy. Also, in both works the brushwork of the cloth is elaborately rendered and the figures more smoothly and firmly modelled.
Johannes can be seen as a link between the first generation of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, which involved, among others, his father and also his teacher, Gerrit van Honthorst, and the following generation of Dutch Classicists, such as Gérard de Lairesse. The influence of these artists can be seen in the Colnaghi picture, where van Bronchorst has depicted a life-size representation of a guitar player, with a heightened contrast between light and dark. Although we are not aware of the exact date of the death of Johannes van Bronchorst, we do know that, like his father before him, Bronchorst travelled to Italy in the late 1640s, staying and working in both Rome and Venice. It is assumed that it was during his stay in Italy that he died at no more than thirty years old, a victim of the epidemics that were sweeping the whole country between the years of 1652 and 1660. No doubt, looking at the superiority of the works that we know by him, were he to have lived on, his reputation might have eclipsed that of his father.
Dr Albert Blankert proposed and confirms the attribution to Johannes van Bronchorst which is supported by Peter van den Brink.
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| Provenance: Charles le Grelle, Brussels, circa 1930; thence by descent to the present owners.
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P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd - 15 Old Bond Street London W1S 4AX, United Kingdom Tel: +44-20-7491 7408 Fax: +44-20-7491 8851 contact@colnaghi.co.uk
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