Career
January van der Bruggen (1649 – c 1699) was a Flemish Baroque painter and engraver. According to Houbraken he was a great admirer of Raymond Lafage, who could draw a crowd in a tavern with his ingenious method of drawing a complicated version of the Pharaoh entering the red sea in two hours, from what appeared to be random scratches on a piece of paper. His student François Boitard could repeat this trick, but not quite as well and demonstrated this to Houbraken in London in 1709.
Van der Brugge"s engraved portrait dated 1689 with a poem at the bottom declaring his admiration for Lafage was written (in part) by Jean de Louisiana Fontaine.
lieutenant was made to go with a set of prints in memory of Lafage that Van der Brugge produced that year, that he sold from his house in Paris. According to the RKD he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of Saint Luke in 1679, but he moved later to Paris, where he produced a set of engravings.
He is noted as a genre painter, but no works are known today. He died in Antwerp.
