The Guitar Player

The Guitar Player in the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, dated around 1640, represents Brouwer at the height of his ability to invest a single figure with complete psychological presence. Guitar and lute players were common subjects in Baroque genre painting, often associated with the pleasures — and dangers — of idleness and sensual enjoyment. Brouwer's version departs from the elegant musical company pieces of Jan Steen or the Leiden fijnschilders: his guitarist is rougher, more absorbed, his attention turned entirely inward on the sounds he is producing. The Berlin collections hold several Brouwer works, a reflection of the intense German scholarly and collecting interest in seventeenth-century Flemish genre painting since the nineteenth century. The 1640 date, again possibly a slight post-mortem misdating, places the work among the last products of Brouwer's circle — his influence was so pervasive in Antwerp and Amsterdam that works by close followers were frequently attributed to him in later centuries.

Oil on a small format, the composition centers the guitarist in three-quarter view with the instrument's body creating a strong diagonal that pulls the eye from lower left to upper right. Brouwer renders the guitar's curved silhouette with a single confident outlineand fills in the shadow areas without overworking them. The player's expression — eyes half-closed, lips slightly parted — is captured in a few strokes that convincingly suggest musical absorption.