#ter borch

[kundst]

Harmen ter Borch (Dutch 1638-1677)

In the wind walking figures on a row (1648)

Pen and ink on paper (12 x 37 cm)

Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

[rubenista]

Gerard ter Borch, A Gentleman pressing a Lady to drink (detail), 1658-1659. Oil on canvas, 41.5 x 32.0 cm. Royal Collection, UK.

[paintingsexplained]

Gerard ter Borch, A Young Woman at her Toilet with a Maid, c. 1650, 47 x 35 cm, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917

Vermeer's paintings emerged from a new type of society that existed in The Netherlands in the second half of the 17th century. It was made up of an elite of merchants and it had a larger middle class than other parts of Europe. These people demanded a new type of art. And painters reacted by making new products. One of them was paintings of domestic interiors. This includes Vermeer's works butalso similar pictures by many other artists. Ter Borch  was the first to specialize in this type of image of elegant interiors, with a few figures involved in what appear to be casual activities. The figures here are concentrated in their activities. They are unaware of our presence. They make audience feel that we are peering into an intimate private scene. There was a taste in The Netherlands at this time for poems and texts dealing with women who are both attractive and out of reach. That is exactly the mood that we often find in Ter Borch's paintings.

[artisaword]

Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681) Burgomaster Jan van Duren (1613–1687) c. 1666–1667

Oil on canvas 81.5 x 65.5 cm

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gerard ter Borch (1617–1681) Margaretha van Haexbergen (1614–1676) c. 1666–1667

Oil on canvas 81.3 x 65.1 cm

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

[paintingsexplained]

Gerard ter Borch, Gallant Conversation, c. 1654, 71 x 73 cm, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

In this other painting we see Ter Borch's mastery when painting fabrics, especially sateen. Many paintings of domestic interiors like Ter Borch and other Dutch specialists include young men and women. In some cases the presence of musical instruments, unmade beds in the background, playing cards or other elements identified with indecent behavior indicate that the scenes deal with the theme of love and the promise of sex. A young man with a sword hanging from his belt shares a room with two young women. He directs his gesture towards one of them, whose face we do not see. We do not know what their talking about, but is easy to see this as a scene of some kind of courtship. In the 18th century this was named parental admonition, as if the man was the father of the woman that we see from the back.

[rubenista]

Gerard ter Borch, Woman Writing a Letter, 1655

[rubenista]

Gerard ter Borch, The Paternal Admonition, 1654

“Of all the misreadings of a Dutch genre painting, this is the best known. Getting from Goethe's Paternal Admonition - a title that was attached to the painting long before Goethe described it and that has remained in place ever since - to the very different scene we now suppose the painting to represent seems to have required focusing on what is not there, but may once have been: a coin between the upraised thumb and forefinger of the "noble knightly-looking father." On that invisible fulcrum, the whole sense of the painting tips. This is no father, nor are the women his daughter and wife. This is a customer offering payment for the sexual favors of the young woman, a transaction witnessed by the young woman's bawd.” (1)

1. Richard Helgerson, "Soldiers and Enigmatic Girls: The Politics of Dutch Domestic Realism, 1650-1672," Representations 58 (1997): 49.

[rubenista]

Ter Borch, The Letter (detail), 1660-1662