Gerard ter Borch | Baroque Era painter

Gerard Terborch, Terborch also spelled Ter Borch or Terburg (born 1617, Zwolle, Netherlands - died December 8, 1681, Deventer), Dutch Baroque painter who developed his own distinctive type of interior genre in which he depicted with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of well-to-do, middle-class life in 17th-century Holland.

Terborch’s father had been an artist and had visited Rome but from 1621 was employed as a tax collector. Surviving drawings made by the young Terborch in 1625 and 1626 are proudly inscribed and dated by his father. In 1632 Gerard was in Amsterdam, and in 1634 he was a pupil of Pieter de Molijn in Haarlem.

He visited England in 1635, Rome in 1640, and from 1646 spent two or three years in Münster, Westphalia, where the peace congress was in session.

The masterpiece of this period,The Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (1648), portrays the delegates of Holland and of Spain assembled to sign the peace treaty.

After a stay in Madrid he finally returned to his own country at the end of 1650, and in 1655 he settled in Deventer.

Terborch’s works consist almost equally of portraits and genre pieces.

His characteristically delicate technique can be appreciated in the portraits, which are painted on a small, almost miniature scale, though many of them are full-length.

In colour they tend to be subdued, largely because of the sober costume of the times, but by subtlety of tonal gradations and mastery in rendering diverse surface textures he was able to achieve an extraordinary richness of effect.

Particularly characteristic is his manner of rendering satin. His superb colour sense appears to greater advantage in genre subjects, though it is always employed with masterly restraint.

In his earlier years he painted many guardroom subjects in the manner of Pieter Codde and Willem Duyster, but later, from about the time when he finally settled in Holland, he painted calm, exquisitely drawn groups, posed easily and naturally against shadowy backgrounds and imbued with an almost aristocratic elegance that is unique among Dutch painters of his time.

Among many fine examples of Terborch’s art are The Letter (c. 1660-65), The Concert (c. 1657) and Paternal Advice (1654-55). | © Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Gerard ter Borch (Zwolle, dicembre 1617 - Deventer, 8 dicembre 1681) è stato un pittore Olandese, specializzato in scene di genere e ritratti.

La sua prima formazione avvenne presso il padre Gerard ter Borch il Vecchio, per poi diventare allievo del pittore di paesaggi Pieter de Molijn a Haarlem.

Stimolato dalla pittura di Rembrandt e degli italiani, nel 1635 si mise in viaggio e soggiornò lungamente in Inghilterra, dove incontrò Anton van Dyck, in Spagna ed a Roma.

Rientrò in patria nel 1645 e risiedette ad Haarlem, Amsterdam e Münster (in Westfalia), dove tra il 1646-1648 fu ritrattista per l'ambasciatore olandese durante le negoziazioni di pace con la Spagna.

Visse poi in numerosi altri posti, fino a stabilirsi a Deventer, dove morì nel 1681.

Abile ritrattista, si specializzò nella pittura di interni e di scene domestiche della borghesia, spesso con gentili accenni ironici.

Nella cura della bellezza fisica del sui soggetti traspaiono infatti talvolta accenni alla transitorietà delle cose mondane e della ricchezza, alla fugacità capricciosa dell'amore, all'essenza talvolta vuota e vana della mondanità.

Fu un vero maestro nel cogliere le sfumature più sottili, tanto figuratamente nella psicologia, quanto realmente nella stesura pittorica, dove seppe cogliere con maestria il diverso incedere della luce sui più svariati materiali. | © Wikipedia