Pair of Portraits: Elegant Man andElegant Woman, ca. 1660: ElegantWoman

ca. 1660

Gerard ter Borch the Younger(Zwolle 1617 – 1681 Deventer)GB-108.boil on canvas
46.8 x 36.5 cm© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Elegant Woman
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How To Cite
Wieseman, Marjorie E. "Pair of Portraits: Elegant Man and Elegant Woman, ca. 1660." InThe Leiden
Collection Catalogue. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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Sober in both palette and demeanor, yet steeped in demure charm, theseComparative Figures

portraits of an unidentified man and woman exemplify the elegant restraint
and simplicity of Gerard ter Borch the Younger’s small-scale depictions ofprosperous citizens of the Dutch Republic (see (fig 1) for the pendant
portrait). Isolated before a plain dark-green background, the subjects arevisible to knee length; their bodies face three-quarters to center, but theirheads are turned to look directly toward the viewer. The man is clad in a
black doublet and breeches with a cloak of the same color draped over hisleft 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 just barely visible—hegrasps loosely in his right hand. The woman’s attire is equally plain: ablack gown with a voluminous overskirt tucked up to thigh level. Hersleeve cuffs and broad shoulder kerchief are made of sheer white linen;
the cuffs and her underlying chemise are both discreetly trimmed with

Fig 1. Gerard ter Borch, Portraitof a Man, about 1660, oil oncanvas, 66.5 x 49.4 cm, Alte
Pinakothek, Munich, inv.
8128, bpk, Berlin / Alte
Pinakothek / Art Resource, NY

narrow bands of lace. Personal ornaments are few and modest: a folding
fan, a ring, gold earbobs with dangling pearls, and a band of silver lace toedge the crown of her black cap.
Ter Borch’s small-scale portraits cleverly adapted the tradition of grand,
full-length state portraits to suit the more modest republican tastes of theDutch bourgeoisie. Elegant Man and Elegant Woman are typical of those
Ter Borch painted for members of Deventer’s political elite around 1660 orslightly later. Most show the sitter at full length, standing stiffly erect before
a strikingly spare background furnished (if at all) with just a simple table orchair. Poses are often repeated from one painting to another, either exactly
or with trifling variations, such as in the positioning of the hands or in theaccessories included. Elegant Man, for example, is virtually identical inpose and costume to the full-length Portrait of a Man in the Alte

Fig 2. Gerard ter Borch, Portraitof an Older Woman, about 1660,
oil on canvas, 62.5 x 47 cm,
Statens Museum for Kunst,Copenhagen, inv. 418

Pinakothek, Munich (fig 2), while Elegant Woman can be compared tothe Portrait of Johanna Quadacker (private collection) or the Portrait of anOlder Woman in the Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.[1] As
Kettering has noted, this uniformity was both intentional and desirable
among the close-knit community of Deventer’s elite, who felt a particularly
strong sense of civic identity: Ter Borch’s portraits “were designed toreveal 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© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Elegant Woman
Page 4 of 7larger and probably 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 these poses, show the subject at fulllength. Technical evidence does not exclude the possibility that thepresent paintings have been reduced. The canvases have been lined, theedges of the original canvases are irregularly trimmed, and tacking edges
have been removed from all four edges of each canvas. X-radiographs
show little evidence of cusping along any of the canvas edges, suggestingthat they may have been substantially trimmed on all sides.[4] Along thebottom of the woman’s portrait is a 5.5 centimeter-wide horizontal band ofslightly darker green background paint; this may be a remnant of thehorizontal “shadow” Ter Borch often introduced in his full-length portraits
to suggest the transition between wall and floor in an otherwise bare andundefined space. No such band is visible in the portrait of the man, buteven in pendant portraits, these shadowy transitions are not always
precisely aligned between the two paintings, and one may well have beenpresent below the current bottom edge of the canvas.[5]Numerous pentimenti are found in these works, especially in Elegant Man,
some of which are visible with the naked eye. Shadowy contours to eitherside of the man’s figure 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 the figure during the painting
process. Similar pentimenti along the woman’s proper left sleeve and theouter contour of her skirt below the fan suggest that her figure, too, wasshifted or modified during the painting process. The paintings aregenerally in good condition, although Elegant Woman contains a patchedhole in the canvas (about 3 x 2 cm) just to the left of the sitter’s whitecollar.[6]-Marjorie E. Wieseman© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Elegant Woman
Page 5 of 7Endnotes
1. Sturla J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert ter Borch, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1959–60), 2:166, 177–78 and181, 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, for making these images available to me.
5. As, for example, in the Portrait of a Man in Munich (fig. 1) and its pendant Portrait of aWoman (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[1](Possibly) Charles-Léon Cardon (1850–1920), Brussels. 2[2][F. Kleinberger Gallery, Paris].
Frederick B. Pratt (1865–1945), New York, by 1928; by descent until 2006 [Jack Kilgore &Co., New York, 2006].
From whom acquired by the present owner in 2006.

Provenance Notes© 2017 The Leiden Collection

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1. According to Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of theMost Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John
Smith, 8 vols. (London, 1907–27), translated from Beschreibendes und kritischesVerzeichnis 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, “La Galerie 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 from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke
der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts , 10 vols. (Esslingen andParis, 1907–28), 5:100, under no. 320; and 5:123, under no. 400. No paintings of thisdescription were included in the exhibition of Cardon’s collection held in Brussels 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 by Pratt].
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 permanentcollection, 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 . 8 vols.
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Elegant Woman
Page 7 of 7London, 1907–27. Translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke
der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts . 10 vols. Esslingen andParis, 1907–28, 5:100, no. 320, 5:123, no. 400.
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 andpaper tape along 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 whitepriming layer has been applied to the lining reverse, and there are no wax collection seals,stencils, labels or import stamps visible along the lining or stretcher.
A light-colored ground has been thinly and evenly applied. The paint has been applied withloose, 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 acrossthe width of the lower edge. 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.
Compositional changes visible in the images and as pentimenti include slight shifts to the rightside of the figure’s head, to her 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
stretcher edge 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.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection