Elegant Woman
Gerard ter Borch the Younger(Zwolle 1617 – 1681 Deventer)ca. 1660
oil on canvas
46.8 x 36.5 cm
GB-108.b© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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How to cite
Wieseman, Marjorie E. “Pair of Portraits: Elegant Man and Elegant Woman, ca. 1660” (2017). In The Leiden Collection
Catalogue, 3rd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and Lara Yeager-Crasselt. New York, 2020–23.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/ (archived December 2023).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive is managed by apermanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

Sober in both palette and demeanor, yet steeped in demure charm, these portraits ofComparative Figures

an unidentified man and woman exemplify the elegant restraint and simplicity ofGerard ter Borch the Younger’s small-scale depictions of prosperous citizens of theDutch Republic. Isolated before a plain dark-green background, the subjects arevisible to knee length; their bodies face three-quarters to center, but their heads areturned to look directly toward the viewer. The man is clad in a black doublet andbreeches with a cloak of the same color draped over his left shoulder and wrapped
tightly around his middle. The black of his costume and tall “sugarloaf” hat is relieved
only by a plain collar of white linen and the tan gloves—with a flash of red lining justbarely visible—he grasps loosely in his right hand. The woman’s attire is equallyplain: a black gown with a voluminous overskirt tucked up to thigh level. Her sleevecuffs and broad shoulder kerchief are made of sheer white linen; the cuffs and herunderlying chemise are both discreetly trimmed with narrow bands of lace. Personalornaments are few and modest: a folding fan, a ring, gold earbobs with dangling
pearls, and a band of silver lace to edge the crown of her black cap.

Fig 1. Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of aMan, about 1660, oil on canvas, 66.5 x
49.4 cm, Alte Pinakothek, Munich,inv. 8128, bpk, Berlin / Alte
Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY

Ter Borch’s small-scale portraits cleverly adapted the tradition of grand, full-lengthstate portraits to suit the more modest republican tastes of the Dutch bourgeoisie.
Elegant Man and Elegant Woman are typical of those Ter Borch painted for membersof Deventer’s political elite around 1660 or slightly later. Most show the sitter at fulllength, standing stiffly erect before a strikingly spare background furnished (if at all)with just a simple table or chair. Poses are often repeated from one painting toanother, either exactly or with trifling variations, such as in the positioning of thehands or in the accessories included. Elegant Man, for example, is virtually identicalin pose and costume to the full-length Portrait of a Man in the Alte Pinakothek,© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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Munich (fig 1), while Elegant Woman can be compared to the Portrait of Johanna
Quadacker (private collection) or the Portrait of an Older Woman in the Statens
Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen (fig 2).[1] As Kettering has noted, this uniformity
was both intentional and desirable among the close-knit community of Deventer’selite, who felt a particularly strong sense of civic identity: Ter Borch’s portraits “weredesigned to reveal a collective identity for sitters whose status within the group . . .
mattered nearly as much as their own individuality.”[2]Gudlaugsson is of the opinion that these pendant paintings were originally larger andprobably depicted the sitters at full length, which seems likely.[3] Most of the portraits
Ter Borch painted around 1660, including those mentioned above that share theseposes, show the subject at full length. Technical evidence does not exclude thepossibility that the present paintings have been reduced. The canvases have beenlined, the edges of the original canvases are irregularly trimmed, and tacking edges

Fig 2. Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of anOlder Woman, about 1660, oil oncanvas, 62.5 x 47 cm, Statens Museum
for Kunst, Copenhagen, inv. 418

have been removed from all four edges of each canvas. X-radiographs show little
evidence of cusping along any of the canvas edges, suggesting that they may havebeen substantially trimmed on all sides.[4] Along the bottom of the woman’s portrait isa 5.5 centimeter-wide horizontal band of slightly darker green background paint; thismay be a remnant of the horizontal “shadow” Ter Borch often introduced in his fulllength portraits to suggest the transition between wall and floor in an otherwise bareand undefined space. No such band is visible in the portrait of the man, but even inpendant portraits, these shadowy transitions are not always precisely aligned between
the two paintings, and one may well have been present below the current bottom edgeof the canvas.[5]Numerous pentimenti are found in these works, especially in Elegant Man, some ofwhich are visible with the naked eye. Shadowy contours to either side of the man’sfigure and around the left, top and right sides of his hat suggest that Ter Borch may
originally have planned for a somewhat bulkier figure, or that he re-positioned thefigure during the painting process. Similar pentimenti along the woman’s proper left
sleeve and the outer contour of her skirt below the fan suggest that her figure, too,
was shifted or modified during the painting process. The paintings are generally ingood condition, although Elegant Woman contains a patched hole in the canvas (about3 x 2 cm) just to the left of the sitter’s white collar.[6]- Marjorie E. Wieseman, 2017

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Elegant Woman
Page 4 of 6Endnotes
1. Sturla J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert ter Borch, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1959–60), 2: 166, 177–78 and 181, nos.
158, 175, and 182 respectively.
2. Alison McNeil Kettering, “Gerard ter Borch’s Portraits of the Deventer Elite,” Simiolis 27 (1999): 58.
3. Sturla J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert ter Borch, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1959–60), 2: 167, 168.
4. X-rays were taken in 2012 by Jean Neeman and digitized by Yosi Poseilov, both of the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art. I am grateful to Amy Walsh, curator of European paintings at LACMA, formaking these images available to me.
5. As, for example, in the Portrait of a Man in Munich (fig. 1) and its pendant Portrait of a Woman (inv.
8129), in which the shadowy “transition” is significantly higher in the former than it is in the latter
portrait.
6. See the technical report prepared by Annette Rupprecht, March 2012.

Provenance(Possibly) Charles-Auguste-Louis-Joseph, Duc de Morny (1811–1865), Paris.[1](Possibly) Charles-Léon Cardon (1850–1920), Brussels. [2][F. Kleinberger Gallery, Paris].
Frederick B. Pratt (1865–1945), New York, by 1928; by descent until 2006 [Jack Kilgore & Co., NewYork, 2006].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Provenance Notes

1. According to Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch
Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, 8 vols. (London, 1907–27),translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen
Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28), 5:100, under no. 320; and 5:123,
under no. 400. However, no paintings of this description appear in any of the sales of paintings from thecollection of the Duc de Morny held from 1841 to 1868; nor are they mentioned in L. Lagrange, “LaGalerie de M. Le Duc de Morny,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 14 (April 1863): 289–306.
2. Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of
the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, 8 vols. (London, 1907–27), translated© 2024 The Leiden Collection

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from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler desXVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28), 5:100, under no. 320; and 5:123, under no.
400. No paintings of this description were included in the exhibition of Cardon’s collection held inBrussels in 1912 (Exposition de la Miniature [Exh. cat. Brussels, Palais Goffinet] [Brussels, 1912]), or
listed in the posthumous sales of paintings from his collection (sale, Galerie Fievez, Brussels, 27 June
1921 and 13–15 July 1921).

Exhibition History
Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn Museum, on loan with the permanent collection, 1972–86 [lent byPratt].
Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum of Art, “Dutch Golden Age Paintings,” 22 June 2009–January
2012 [lent by the present owner].
Los Angeles, California, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on loan with the permanent collection,April 2012–July 2014 [lent by the present owner].

References
Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of
the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith. Edited and translated by Edward G. Hawke, 5:100, no. 320; 5: 123, no. 400. 8 vols. London, 1907–28. Originally published as Beschreibendes undkritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10vols. Esslingen and Paris, 1907–28.
Gudlaugsson, Sturla, J. Geraert ter Borch. 2 vols. The Hague, 1959–60, 2: 167–68, nos. 162 and 163.

Technical Summary
The support, a single piece of fine, plain, closed-weave fabric with tacking margins removed and paper tapealong the edges, has been lined. There is a pronounced vertical thread to the figure’s left and a restored
rectangular area of damage to the left of the figure’s white collar.[1] A white priming layer has been applied to
the lining reverse, and there are no wax collection seals, stencils, labels or import stamps visible along thelining or stretcher.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The paint has been applied with loose, fluid
brushstrokes in thin, smooth glazes with no use of impasto. The figure is silhouetted against a green
background that has a slightly darker green, 5.5 cm–high horizontal band across the width of the lower edge.
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This differs from the similarly sized companion portrait Elegant Man (GB-108.a), which has a plain green
background without a darker green horizontal band.
No underdrawing is readily apparent in infrared images captured at 780–1000 nanometers. Compositionalchanges visible in the images and as pentimenti include slight shifts to the right side of the figure’s head, toher proper left sleeve, and to her skirt below the folded black fan.
The painting is unsigned and undated.
The painting was cleaned and restored in 2006 and remains in a good state of preservation.

Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Rectangular damage: 3 cm H x 2 cm W. Pronounced thread: approx. 13.5 cm from the left stretcheredge when measured along the upper edge and 16 cm from the left stretcher edge when measured along
the lower edge. There is no X-radiograph of this painting that would indicate whether this is a thread
anomaly or perhaps a canvas seam.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection