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Shown from the lap up, a man with pale skin sits facing our right in profile, playing a bagpipe in this vertical painting. He is lit from our left so his face is in shadow, and he looks off to our right. He has dark eyebrows, a chestnut-brown mustache and short beard, and a rounded nose. He wears a floppy, chocolate-brown beret that covers his hair and the ear facing us. A cream-white, voluminous shirt falls off the shoulder close to us, and a fawn-brown robe gathers around his lap. He blows into a long mouthpiece as he squeezes the tawny-brown bag of the instrument between his forearms. Two long, wooden pipes rest over his shoulder, and he covers the finger-holes of the flute-like chanter at the front of the bag. The background behind him is pale peanut brown. The artist signed and dated the painting just to the right of the musician’s face, “HTBrugghen fecit 1624,” with the HTB intertwined into a monogram.
Read the visual description

Shown from the lap up, a man with pale skin sits facing our right in profile, playing a bagpipe in this vertical painting. He is lit from our left so his face is in shadow, and he looks off to our right. He has dark eyebrows, a chestnut-brown mustache and short beard, and a rounded nose. He wears a floppy, chocolate-brown beret that covers his hair and the ear facing us. A cream-white, voluminous shirt falls off the shoulder close to us, and a fawn-brown robe gathers around his lap. He blows into a long mouthpiece as he squeezes the tawny-brown bag of the instrument between his forearms. Two long, wooden pipes rest over his shoulder, and he covers the finger-holes of the flute-like chanter at the front of the bag. The background behind him is pale peanut brown. The artist signed and dated the painting just to the right of the musician’s face, “HTBrugghen fecit 1624,” with the HTB intertwined into a monogram.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Bagpipe Player

Hendrick ter Brugghen

Date
1624
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 100.7 x 82.9 cm (39 5/8 x 32 5/8 in.) framed: 129.54 × 111.76 × 7.62 cm (51 × 44 × 3 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
2009.24.1
Credit line
Paul Mellon Fund and Greg and Candy Fazakerley Fund
Time span
1601 to 1650
Department
CNE-B
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • Baroque
  • amusement
  • genre
  • Acquired after launch of Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century (NGA Online Editions)
  • Dutch
  • Bagpiper
  • music
Provenance

Possibly Aernout van Lingen, Utrecht, by 1676.[1] probably with (Glenz, Berlin), in 1915;[2] possibly Gustav Klemperer Edler von Klemenau [1852-1926], Dresden; his son, Dr. Herbert von Klemperer [1878-1951], Berlin;[3] (sale, Lange, Berlin, 18-19 November 1938, no. 151); acquired by Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, inv. no. 2613; restituted July 2008 to Klemperer's heirs; (sale, Sotheby's, New York, 9 January 2009, no. 40); (Johnny Van Haeften London Ltd., London; Otto Naumann, New York; Bernheimer Fine Art Ltd., Munich); purchased April 2009 by NGA. [1] The inventory of Aernout van Lingen, "raad in de Vroedshap," which was made in Utrecht in 1676, lists: "Een saakpijp van Ter Brugghen." The inventory, first published by Marten Jan Bok ("Hendrick Jansz. ter Brugghen," in Albert Blankert et al., _Nieuw Licht op de Gouden Eeuw; Hendrick ter Brugghen en tijdgenoten_, exh. cat., Centraal Museum, Utrecht; Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig, 1986-1987: 71), is in the Gemeentearchief Utrecht, Stadsarchief II, inv. no. 3146, 1676. [2] A. von Schneider, _Caravaggio und die Niederländer_, Marburg-Lahn, 1933; 2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1967: 140. [3] Dr. Klemperer was forced to surrender the painting when he left Germany in 1938.

Inscription

upper right, in brown paint, HTB in monogram: HTBrugghen fecit 1624

NGA object ID 144298. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.