Elegant Man
Gerard ter Borch the Younger(Zwolle 1617 – 1681 Deventer)ca. 1660
oil on canvas
46.8 x 36.5 cm
GB-108.a© 2020 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,2nded.

EditedbyArthurK.

WheelockJr.

NewYork,

2017–20.

https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/an-elegant-man/ (archived May 2020).
A PDF of every version of this entry is available in this Online Catalogue's Archive, and the Archive ismanaged by a permanent URL. New versions are added only when a substantive change to the narrative
occurs.

© 2020 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: a black
gown with a voluminous overskirt tucked up to thigh level. Her sleeve cuffs
and broad shoulder kerchief are made of sheer white linen; the cuffs and herunderlying chemise are both discreetly trimmed with narrow bands of lace.

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

Personal ornaments 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 blackcap.
Ter Borch’s small-scale portraits cleverly adapted the tradition of grand, fulllength state 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 members of Deventer’s political elite around 1660 or slightly
later. Most show the sitter at full length, standing stiffly erect before astrikingly 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 in poseand costume to the full-length Portrait of a Man in the Alte Pinakothek,Munich (fig 2), while Elegant Woman can be compared to the Portrait ofFig 2. Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of
an Older Woman, about 1660, oilon canvas, 62.5 x 47 cm, Statens
Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen,inv. 418

Johanna Quadacker (private collection) or the Portrait of an Older Woman inthe Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.[1] As Kettering has noted, thisuniformity 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 to reveal a collective identity
for sitters whose status within the group . . . mattered nearly as much as theirown individuality.”[2]Gudlaugsson is of the opinion that these pendant paintings were originallylarger and probably depicted the sitters at full length, which seems© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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likely.[3] Most of the portraits Ter Borch painted around 1660, including thosementioned above that share these poses, show the subject at full length.
Technical evidence does not exclude the possibility that the present
paintings have been reduced. The canvases have been lined, the edges ofthe 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, suggesting that they
may have been substantially trimmed on all sides.[4] Along the bottom of thewoman’s portrait is a 5.5 centimeter-wide horizontal band of slightly darker
green background paint; this may be a remnant of the horizontal “shadow”
Ter Borch often introduced in his full-length portraits to suggest the transition
between wall and floor in an otherwise bare and undefined space. No suchband is visible in the portrait of the man, but even in pendant portraits, theseshadowy transitions are not always precisely aligned between the twopaintings, and one may well have been present below the current bottomedge 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 the outer contour of her
skirt below the fan suggest that her figure, too, was shifted or modified duringthe painting process. The paintings are generally in good condition, although
Elegant Woman contains a patched hole in the canvas (about 3 x 2 cm) justto the left of the sitter’s white collar.[6]- Marjorie E. Wieseman, 2017

© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Elegant Man
Page 5 of 7Endnotes

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 atLACMA, 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 thanit 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., New York, 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 MostEminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century Based on the Work of John Smith, 8vols. (London, 1907–27), translated from Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis derWerke der hervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, 10 vols. (Esslingenand Paris, 1907–28), 5:100, under no. 320; and 5:123, under no. 400. However, no paintingsof this description appear in any of the sales of paintings from the collection of the Duc deMorny 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.
© 2020 The Leiden Collection

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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 derhervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. 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 in Brussels in 1912 (Exposition dela 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 [lentby 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. Edited andtranslated by Edward G. Hawke, 5: 100, no. 320; 5: 123, no. 400. 8 vols. London, 1907–28.
Originally published as Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke derhervorragendsten höllandischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts. 10 vols. 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 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 white© 2020 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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priming 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 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 widthof the lower edge. This differs from the similarly sized companion portrait GB-109, Portrait of A
Man, 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.

© 2020 The Leiden Collection