The Amazing Adventures of Archibald Esq.
Dog Art: Gerard Ter Borch II (1617 - 1681)
Gerard Ter Borch II was a Dutch painter, and was the son of a painter. Gerard went to England in 1635, to Italy in 1640, and in 1648 to Münster, Westphalia, where he painted his celebrated Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (1648, National Gallery, London), marking the recognition of Dutch independence. From 1648 to 1651 Ter Borch lived in Madrid.
Despite extensive foreign travel, Gerard remained a painter of Dutch family life. He worked in the realistic tradition of Frans Hals, Jan Vermeer, and other Dutch painters, with careful attention to lighting and the rendering of fabric. Gerard produced charmingly realistic portraits and small, intimate genre scenes. This one of a boy ridding his dog of fleas could be seen as a study in browns, and seems a far cry from the stark lines and dazzling light of Vermeer’s work.
Gerard Ter Borch II. A Boy Ridding His Dog of Fleas. c. 1665. Oil on canvas. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.
In 1635-36 Ter Borch was in London where he acquired familiarity with the English court portraiture. During the 1640s he began to make extraordinary small and miniature portraits. One of the most touching is his tiny portrait of Helena van der Schalcke as a child, which holds it’s own when hung next to the pictures Rembrandt made of children.
Ter Borch’s fame rests mainly upon the genre pictures he made after the middle of the 17th century which help define the subjects and pictorial schemes used by many artists of his generation and those who worked later. It is perhaps this that lends his work the tone of ‘chocolate box’ works..
In contrast to Pieter de Hooch, Ter Borch maintained his fine taste and craftsmanship in his genre pieces until the very end. His contact with Vermeer in Delft in 1635 may have had an impact on the younger master. Then there conceivably was a shift; some of Ter Borch’s late works seem to show a sign of Vermeer’s influence. However, the development may have been independent.
In any event, the exquisite and minute treatment of materials, textures, and stuffs with the most intricate light accents is completely personal to Gerard Ter Borch’s oeuvre. Whether miniature full-length portraits, or scenes of - supposedly - everyday life, Ter Borch’s pictures are distinguished by technical and psychological refinement.
Ter Borch, the son of a painter, was born in Zwolle and trained there in the studio of his father and also in the Haarlem workshop of the landscape painter Pieter Molijn. In his youth he travelled widely in Europe - to Germany, Italy, England, France and Spain. By 1654 he had settled in Deventer in his native province of Overijssel, where he achieved great professional success. He also became one of the town’s regent class, serving as a councillor and painting a group portrait of his fellow regents.
In the genre scenes of his early years ter Borch depicted the life of soldiers but after settling in Deventer his paintings often showed elegant interiors in which small groups of figures talk, drink and make music. In this painting ter Borch shows a humbler setting and a mundane subject and yet he treats with the same delicacy and refinement the depiction of the differing textures of fur, hair, wood and felt.
Superwoof!!
Archie, the art-hound
Posted 12 Mar 08
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