2007 Catalogue - Colnaghi

06
Johannes van Bronchorst
(Utrecht 1627 – 1656 Italy)
Provenance: Charles le Grelle, Brussels, circa 1930;
thence by descent to the present owners.
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 Bijlert1 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. 2 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. 3 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. 4 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. 5 Nevertheless comparing our
A Lady playing a Guitar on a Balcony
Oil on canvas
49 7 /8 x 41 1 /2 in. (126.8 x 105.4 cm.)
30
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. 6 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 confirmed the
attribution to Johannes van Bronchorst which is
supported by Peter van den Brink. 7