Re-Discovering Hendrick Ter Brugghen - by Natasha Seaman

Ahead of the publication of her book – Hendrick ter Brugghen: Utrecht's Subtle Master – author Natasha Seaman reflects on how she came to the subject, and what developments have been made in the study of the artist's work, almost 70 years after Lund Humphries' first catalogue raisonné of Ter Brugghen's paintings... 
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In 1958, when Lund Humphries published Benedict Nicolson’s catalogue raisonnée on Hendrick ter Brugghen (then spelled “Terbrugghen”), the seventeenth-century Dutch artist was little known. Unlike what was then expected of Dutch paintings of this period, namely still lifes, landscapes, and smaller-scale scenes of everyday life, Ter Brugghen produced complex life-size religious, history, and genre paintings. Nicolson’s insightful prose and thoughtful connoisseurship kindled modern Ter Brugghen scholarship. Since the book’s publication, Ter Brugghen has been the subject of a thorough new catalogue raisonnée. He has also been a star player in an assortment of exhibitions, such as on artists from Utrecht, where he lived and worked, and on painters who interpreted the Italian painter Caravaggio’s style. Yet there has been no single, accessible study of the artist’s paintings that covers his career from its somewhat halting beginning in the 1610s, through its flourishing in the 1620s, to its sudden end with his death in 1629 at age 42.

Nearly 70 years after Nicolson’s groundbreaking start, I am pleased to publish with Lund Humphries a new book on Ter Brugghen that seeks to fulfil that mission. In the intervening years, archival discoveries have nuanced our understanding of the artist’s life (for instance, Nicolson believed Ter Brugghen to be Catholic, but his children’s baptismal records suggest his allegiance was with the Reformed Church), and new paintings have come to light and landed in major collections, such as Roman Charity at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Allegory of Faith with the Leiden Collection.

Ter Brugghen’s works have also been the subject of various studies that have grappled with the complexity of his compositions, which almost always veer from the conventional. His Crucifixion (Metropolitan Museum of Art), for instance, presents a vividly bleeding Christ whose anatomy evokes sixteenth-century painting alongside a more Caravaggesque John the Evangelist and Mary, all against a stark, starlit sky. Writers have grappled with the painting’s relationship to theology, its archaism (using elements of an older style alongside that of his own day), and its unusual backdrop. Other paintings have been less well studied, offering the opportunity to open discussion of such works as his Denial of Peter (Art Institute of Chicago), where Peter, lurking in the gloomy background, is challenged by a brilliantly lit woman at the edge of a fire. In contrast to the version by Ter Brugghen’s Catholic Utrecht contemporary Gerard van Honthorst (Minneapolis Museum of Art), the painting humbles and humanizes Peter. Can this be related to the artist’s Reformed sympathies?

By examining Ter Brugghen’s work in an extended study across his career and the variety of subjects that he took up, themes and patterns emerge. Some of these Nicolson remarked, like his unforgiving naturalism, his use of archaism, or centering his paintings around a tangle of gesturing hands. Others have become clearer in the intervening years, such as his commitment to pairing paintings to create a productive friction between them rather than a mere complement. This is visible not only in works clearly intended to be displayed together, such as the Rijksmuseum’s Democritus and Heraclitus but also in the Calling of Matthew (Centraal Museum, Utrecht) and Doubting Thomas (Rijksmuseum), subtly linked through the role of pointing in both paintings as well as their opposing notions of faith (absolute, as in the Matthew, or demanding evidence, as in the Thomas).

My own interest in Ter Brugghen’s art began with the Crucifixion and expanded to his other artworks with archaic elements, which became the subject of my first book on the artist. I felt the pull to return to Ter Brugghen after working on his St. Sebastian Tended by Irene (resplendent on the front cover of the book) and am grateful to have had the opportunity to survey his work more thoroughly in this book. Overall, my goal has been to provide a venue to better understand Ter Brugghen, not only as an artist in his own right but as a vital conduit of Caravaggio’s style to the Netherlands, impacting not only his younger contemporary, Rembrandt van Rijn, but also Johannes Vermeer, born three years after his death. One of Ter Brugghen’s biographers referred to him as “deep thinking,” a characteristic that is evident in his paintings and provokes a like response in his viewers. This book provides a guide to understanding his development, inspirations, and meaning of his most significant works.
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Hendrick ter Brugghen: Utrecht's Subtle Master by Natasha Seaman will publish on 20th August 2026 and is available to pre-order.

Image credits:
Ter Brugghen, Roman Charity, 1622, oil on canvas, 147.6 × 137.5 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ter Brugghen, Crucifixion, 1625, oil on canvas, 154.9 x 102.2 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ter Brugghen, Denial of Peter, 1628, oil on canvas, 132.3 × 178 cm, Art Institute of Chicago
Ter Brugghen, Democritus, 1628, oil on canvas, 85.7 x 70 cm, Rijksmuseum
Ter Brugghen, Heraclitus, 1628, oil on canvas, 85.5 x 70 cm, Rijksmuseum 
Ter Brugghen, Doubting Thomas, c. 1621, oil on canvas, 108.8 x 136.5 cm, Rijksmuseum 
Ter Brugghen, The calling of Saint Matthew, 1621, oil on canvas, 162.6 x 129.2 cm, purchased with the support of the Rembrandt Association 1925, Centraal Museum, Utrecht