Delphi Complete Paintings of Gerard ter Borch (Illustrated) E-Book

Gerard ter Borch

• Herausgeber: Delphi Publishing Ltd
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Delphi Masters of Art
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 111

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

A master of the Dutch Golden Age, Gerard ter Borch was a Baroque painter that developed his own distinctive type of genre painting, in which he depicted the elegant atmosphere of seventeenth century middle-class and aristocratic life. His delicate technique was often executed in a small, almost miniature scale. Ter Borch is celebrated for his mastery of rendering diverse surface textures, especially satin and silk, achieving an extraordinary richness of effect. His inimitable genre scenes would go on to inspire De Hooch, Metsu and Vermeer. Delphi’s Masters of Art Series presents the world’s first digital e-Art books, allowing readers to explore the works of great artists in comprehensive detail. This volume presents Ter Borch’s complete paintings, with concise introductions, hundreds of high quality images and the usual Delphi bonus material. (Version 1)

* The complete paintings of Gerard ter Borch – over 300 images, fully indexed and arranged in chronological and alphabetical order
* Includes reproductions of rare works
* Features a special ‘Highlights’ section, with concise introductions to the masterpieces, giving valuable contextual information
* Enlarged ‘Detail’ images, allowing you to explore Ter Borch’s celebrated works in detail, as featured in traditional art books
* Hundreds of images in colour – highly recommended for viewing on tablets and smartphones or as a valuable reference tool on more conventional eReaders
* Special chronological and alphabetical contents tables for the paintings
* Easily locate the artworks you wish to view
* Features a bonus biography – discover Ter Borch's world

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CONTENTS:

The Highlights
Man on Horseback (1634)
Procession with Flagellants (c. 1636)
Portrait of a Man (1639)
Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (1648)
Scene in an Inn (1648)
A Young Woman at her Toilet with a Maid (1651)
Woman Combing a Child’s Hair (1653)
The Knife Grinder’s Family (1653)
Woman Writing a Letter (c. 1654)
The Gallant Conversation (1654)
The Suitor’s Visit (1658)
Curiosity (c. 1660)
Glass of Lemonade (1664)
The Magistrates of Deventer (1667)
Posthumous Portrait of Moses ter Borch (1668)

The Paintings
The Complete Paintings
Alphabetical List of Paintings

The Biography
Gerard Terborch, Jan Vermeer, and Jan Steen (1911) by Charles H. Caffin

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Leseprobe

Gerard ter Borch

(1617-1681)

Contents

The Highlights

Man on Horseback (1634)

Procession with Flagellants (c. 1636)

Portrait of a Man (1639)

Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (1648)

Scene in an Inn (1648)

A Young Woman at her Toilet with a Maid (1651)

Woman Combing a Child’s Hair (1653)

The Knife Grinder’s Family (1653)

Woman Writing a Letter (c. 1654)

The Gallant Conversation (1654)

The Suitor’s Visit (1658)

Curiosity (c. 1660)

Glass of Lemonade (1664)

The Magistrates of Deventer (1667)

Posthumous Portrait of Moses ter Borch (1668)

The Paintings

The Complete Paintings

Alphabetical List of Paintings

The Biography

Gerard Terborch, Jan Vermeer, and Jan Steen (1911) by Charles H. Caffin

The Delphi Classics Catalogue

© Delphi Classics 2022

Version 1

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Masters of Art Series

Gerard ter Borch

By Delphi Classics, 2022

COPYRIGHT

Masters of Art - Gerard Ter Borch

First published in the United Kingdom in 2022 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2022.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 80170 087 0

Delphi Classics

is an imprint of

Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [email protected]

www.delphiclassics.com

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The Highlights

Map of Zwolle by Joan Blaeu in ‘Toonneel der Steden’, 1652 — Ter Borch was born in December 1617 in Zwolle, in the province of Overijssel in the Dutch Republic.

Zwolle today

The Highlights

In this section, a sample of Ter Borch’s most celebrated works is provided, with concise introductions, special ‘detail’ reproductions and additional biographical images.

Man on Horseback (1634)

A leading exponent of the Dutch Golden Age of art, Gerard ter Borch was born in 1617 in Zwolle. Unlike for many painters of his era, there is a surprising amount of surviving documentary material regarding his life and early career.  Firstly, he trained at the age of eight with his father Gerard ter Borch the Elder (1584-1662), an accomplished artist that had spent several years in Rome. Many of his childhood drawings were annotated with notes and dates by his father, adding to the wealth of biographical knowledge of the artist’s early period.

He was not precocious in his talent, but slow to mature, becoming assured in his work in the late 1640’s in his mid-twenties. His early work reveals little of the sensitivity of expression and understanding that would later permeate his major portraits and genre paintings. The youthful works also lack the skillful mastering of texture and sheen of fabrics that would go on to win him great renown. Nonetheless, they laid a foundation for an extraordinary burst of creativity, producing a series of intensely personal and timeless works, which captured human ideals and moods, resonating far beyond their setting. In time, they would inform the work of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) in Delft and Frans van Mieris (1635-1681) in Leiden.

Apart from the technical guidance given by his father, Ter Borch also received invaluable instruction in the business requirements of running a studio and forming important and lucrative contacts. Zwolle was an important trading centre, though it was largely provincial as a city, having never attained a considerable artistic tradition. Indeed, Gerard the Elder would have learnt under no prestigious teacher in the city and had to complement his training through long and expensive studies in Italy and Spain. The father’s aspirations to become a professional artist were doomed to fail, as he was never financially secure to support his large family on the income he earned from his art. In 1628 he accepted a steady income of an administrative post in Zwolle, effectively ending his dreams of becoming a great artist, yet safeguarding the livelihood of his children. His role was to collect taxes on commercial traffic passing through the city for the States General in The Hague — a time-consuming task, as the city’s trade from Germany and Holland was bustling, due to its position at the juncture of two rivers. Although his new role precluded opportunities of pursuing his art, he no doubt held great hopes for his son, who demonstrated an innate talent for drawing.

Due to the large number of drawings that have been preserved in the family archives, we can glimpse the teaching process that the young Ter Borch underwent. In his earliest years he was encouraged to study prints made by Hendrik Goltzius (1558-1617) and Aegidius Sadeler (1555-1609), from which he learned how to manage his pen strokes and to apply ink with a brush for chiaroscuro effects. Next, he was instructed to draw from sculptures, especially casts of antique models, which taught him to model the human form with light and dark components. In the early 1630’s, Ter Borch was studying prints by Pieter Quast (1605-1647) and Jacques Callot (1592-1635), producing technically assured copies of these masters, whose work revealed how to exaggerate human features for effect, while using body language to propel narrative.

By 1631, at the age of fourteen, Ter Borch was already working with a sketchbook, completing landscape drawings that included representations of buildings in Zwolle and farmsteads in the nearby countryside. These pen and ink drawings reveal compositional sensitivity, a good understanding of perspective and a recurring interest in exploring chiaroscuro effects.  His interest in examining nature and human figures, both in motion and rest, was in keeping with the development of Dutch art during the 1620’s and 1630’s. Already, the son was exploring and progressing further than his father; realising this, Gerard the Elder unselfishly sent his son to Amsterdam and then Haarlem to study with new masters, who could better provide guidance in new artistic approaches.

It has been suggested that he studied either under Pieter Codde (1599-1678) or Willem Duyster (c. 1598-1635), who both were known for their painted scenes of soldiers in barracks or drunkenly idling away their time in inns — subjects that Ter Borch would gravitate toward in the early years of his career. In 1634 he arrived in Haarlem, where he studied with Pieter Molijn (1595-1661), a highly respected draftsman and painter, who was also active in the administration of the city’s Guild. Molijn had embraced the stylistic innovations of the time and was able to provide his pupil with guidance in a range of subjects, including market scenes, dune landscapes and cavalry battle scenes. The immediate impact of this new teacher is clearly evident in the stylistic transformation of Ter Borch’s landscape drawings. He no longer used pen in his sketchbook, opting instead for black chalk — the master’s preferred medium. The soft and broken lines produced by chalk enabled him to convey atmospheric effects of dune landscapes with greater detail. His successful apprenticeship under Molijn culminated in 1635, when he was named a master in his own right in Haarlem’s Saint Luke’s Guild.

Man on Horseback (1634), housed today in the Museum of Fine Arts, after a 1961 purchase from the estate of the collector Martha Dana Mercer, portrays a rider slumped in the saddle, moving away from the viewer. The Dutch War for Independence had taken place over much of Ter Borch’s early career and many of his early works concern military themes, even in drawings made when he was eight years old. Represented from behind, the cavalier’s posture, with downcast head and slumped position, convey an apt expression of the struggle and loneliness of war.  This is no heroic paragon, represented in action in the midst of battle, but instead the daring portrayal of a jaded victim, trudging across the fields of an undefined and loveless landscape. The viewer regards the horseman from a low vantage point, making us feel the full weight of the composition’s gloomy overtones. Save for a lone yellow feather in his hat, the palette is sombre and stark, formed of greys and browns. The horse and rider are starkly silhouetted against a cloud-laden sky, with no hope of sun nor better times. Alone, the soldier must endure the endless misery of war. His unseen facial features only heighten the sense of alienation.

There are two other versions of the painting, hinting at the artist’s use of a manikin model to produce similar depictions of the same posture over a long series of studies and oil paintings. These painterly props were invaluable for artists of the time and we know that Ter Borch’s father was a keen advocate of their use.  Although manikins were not helpful for artists in remembering facial expressions, for this particular canvas that was of course no concern. Man on Horseback is an impressive achievement for the young artist and there is no precedent for such a strikingly original depiction of a horseman from behind.

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

Portrait of the artist’s father, Gerard ter Borch the Elder, by his son Moses, 1660

Eighteenth century engraving of Pieter Molijn, Ter Borch’s first great master

‘Landscape with Peasants’ by Pieter Molijn, Budapest, Szépmuvészeti Múzeum, 1640

Portrait of Martha Dana Mercer by Anders Zorn, 1899 —Mercer (1872 – 1960) was a famed art collector and philanthropist, who bequeathed this canvas to the Museum of Fine Arts of Boston.

Procession with Flagellants (c. 1636)

After his appointment as a master in Haarlem’s Saint Luke’s Guild, Ter Borch left for London to work in the studio of his step uncle, Robert van Voerst (1597-1636), an engraver that worked closely with the great Anthony van Dyck. This journey was likely connected to Van Voerst’s royal appointment as engraver to Charles I on 23 May 1635. Ter Borch had arrived in London in early July of that year, with a trunk filled with clothes and art supplies, including brushes, paper, chalk, colours, pens and a manikin, all supplied by his father, who had great hopes for his talented son.  Alas, these plans were to be disappointed and the young artist was back in Zwolle by April the following year. However, the London sojourn did introduce Ter Borch to a new form of refined and elegant art, as encapsulated in his step uncle’s engravings of portraits by Van Dyck. The opportunity of studying Van Dyck’s drawings at first hand was an invaluable resource for the ambitious artist, who recognised how the master could achieve extraordinary grace and elegance, in spite of the economic capabilities of the drawing medium.

Completed soon after his return from London, Procession with Flagellants, now housed in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, is a unique component of the artist’s oeuvre. It is a dark and haunting panel, portraying a nocturnal procession of flagellants, whose white and blood-stained costumes are illuminated by the ominous torch-bearers bordering their path. The figures of the procession lead six hooded men that carry a decorated statue of the Virgin Mary. Behind this sculpture, at the opening of an arched portico, a group of singers are performing, using the torchlight to read the musical scores. The vast areas of black shadow, dominating much of the painting, appear to be on the verge of enveloping the figures. This dark pall hangs heavily over the Flagellants, accentuating the funereal atmosphere.

These Flagellants were members of a fanatical sect, also known as the Brotherhood of the Cross. It originated from northern Italy in the thirteenth century, but by Ter Borch’s time it had spread to Spain, France, Germany and the Netherlands. The members believed that by whipping (flagellating) themselves publicly, they could purge mankind from sin, therefore preserving the world from damnation. Although the Catholic authorities eventually outlawed the sect, it continued to exist throughout the seventeenth century, its appeal often encouraged by political reactions, plagues or the zealous preaching of a radical priest. It remains unknown where Ter Borch would have observed such a gathering, with some suggesting that it took place in Italy or Spain, and was worked up in the studio on his return to the Netherlands. The painting later inspired the Romantic artist Francisco de Goya, who, in the early nineteenth century, produced a similar view of flagellants processing before a sculpture of the Virgin.

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

Anthony van Dyck by Peter Paul Rubens, 1628 — Van Dyck’s fine draughtsmanship had an important early influence on Ter Borch’s approach.

Municipal Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is the premier art museum of Rotterdam, with masterpieces by Rembrandt, Monet, Vincent van Gogh and Salvador Dalí.

‘A Procession of Flagellants’ by Francisco de Goya, Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, 1819

Portrait of a Man (1639)