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Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
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Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice ofMelonca. early 1630s
black chalk, brown ink washes and black ink,
applied with brush point
12.1 x 8.9 cm
inscribed on verso with a collector’s mark: “No 29Terbourg”
GB-110

Gerard ter Borch the Elder(Zwolle 1582/83 – 1662 Zwolle)

How to cite
Schatborn, Peter. “Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue, 3rd ed.
EditedbyArthurK.

WheelockJr.

andLaraYeager-Crasselt.

NewYork,

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.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
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The girl holding a slice of melon in both hands looks to her right, where something

Comparative Figuresapparently has grabbed her attention. More fruit, or some other unidentifiable food,lie in front of her. She wears a wide white collar over her dress; her hair is tied behind
her head with a bow, but some loose strands hang over her forehead. Gerard ter Borch
the Younger laid in the drawing with black chalk and then worked it up in pen andbrown ink, sometimes to reinforce the contours. He also applied a brown wash to
shade one side of the girl’s face and to cover the background. This wash strengthens
the effect of light falling on her face and clothing.
Apart from landscapes drawn in Italy,[1] Ter Borch made only a few known drawings“from life.” Among these is a group from the early 1630s, to which this work
belongs, in which he depicted the two daughters he had with his second wife,[2]Geesken van Voerst (1599–in or before 1628). The elder daughter, Anna, was bornon 27 October 1622, and the younger, Sara, on 23 July 1624.[3] Even though he later
had more daughters with his third wife, none of them is likely to be the subject of thisdrawing, as they were not born until the second half of the 1630s. Furthermore, TerFig 1. Gerard ter Borch the Elder,
Head of a Little Girl Wearing aNecklace, Bending Forward, early
1630s, pen and brown ink, brush andgray wash over traces of black chalk,
Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam, inv.
no. RP-T-1887-A-768

Borch made very few drawings after the mid-1630s, which bolsters the argument that
this work dates from the early 1630s.[4]Gerard ter Borch the Elder had a number of children, all of whom drew under hissupervision, no doubt taking his drawings as their example. Drawing from life,
particularly the human figure, was, like drawing from the imagination, an importantpart of artistic instruction. Ter Borch frequently annotated and dated the drawings
made by his sons Gerard the Younger (1617–81), Harmen (1638–77), and Mozes(1645–67), and in a number of instances he noted that they had been made “fromlife.” On the verso of Gerard the Younger’s drawing Head of a Girl, he wrote “15December 1633.”[5] This work, and a comparable drawing of a young girl, may havebeen inspired by Gerard the Elder’s Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice ofMelon, and, indeed, may represent the same model.[6] Watching his father draw thegirls may well have prompted Gerard the Younger to execute his own versions.
Gerard the Elder’s drawing probably depicts Sara. She is likely also portrayed in thedrawing Bust-Length Portrait of a Girl with a Necklace, in Amsterdam’s

Fig 2. Gerard ter Borch the Elder,
Head of a Little Girl Wearing aNecklace, early 1630s, pen and brushand brown ink, brush and yellowbrown wash, Rijksprentenkabinet,Amsterdam, inv. no. BI-1887-1463,
fol. 139b

Rijksprentenkabinet (fig 1). Her face was slightly less narrow than that of her sister
Anna,[7] who is depicted—looking somewhat older—in the drawing Girl Reading,
likewise in Amsterdam.[8] The girl wearing a necklace has the same spontaneous lookand loose wisps of hair gracing her forehead as the girl in the present drawing. She isshown wearing a necklace again in a drawing in an album—likewise preserved inAmsterdam—later compiled by her younger half-sister, Gesina ter Borch (1631–90)(fig 2).[9]© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of MelonPage 4 of 6

It was not unusual for Dutch artists, Rembrandt among them, to seek models fromtheir immediate family circle. Nevertheless, this practice was particularly evident inthe Ter Borch family. Not only did Ter Borch the Elder regularly depict his children,
but Gerard the Younger also portrayed Sara, Gesina,[10] and his half-brother Mozes.[11]Surviving works by Mozes include drawings he made of his parents[12] and ofGesina.[13]The drawings in Amsterdam come from the Ter Borch family estate, which remained
intact until the late nineteenth century before it was finally sold at auction in 1886.[14]Most of those works were subsequently acquired by the Rijksmuseum. It was Gesina
who preserved this estate, which also included the drawings and watercolors she madealong with those by her siblings, which had been kept by their father.[15] Altogether
these drawings, which number more than a thousand, present a unique picture of astudio legacy that has no parallel in work from the seventeenth century. It is likelythat the hundred or so drawings by members of the Ter Borch family that can befound in other collections had already been sold or given away in the seventeenthcentury.

- Peter Schatborn, 2017

© 2024 The Leiden Collection

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
Page 5 of 6Endnotes
1. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GSr
4-31.
2. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1:XVII, GSr 107, 108; 2: Appendix 1: 1, 2.
3. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GSr
107
4. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1:under GSr 107, note 1.
5. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GJr
30.
6. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GJr
30 and 31.
7. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GSr
108.
8. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GSr
107.
9. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 2: Gs
62, Family Scrapbook, fol. 139. On fol. 136, where she is portrayed with an older woman, she alsowears a necklace, as indeed she does in a drawing in a private collection in Amsterdam.
10. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GJr
78.
11. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: GJr
97-81.
12. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: M
53 and 54.
13. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: M
56.
14. See foreword by J. W. Niemeijer in Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio
Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1: VII.
15. Alison McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1988), 1:XXIX.

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Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
Page 6 of 6Provenance(Sale, Christie’s, New York, 29 January 2009, no. 44, as by Gerard Ter Borch II [Bob Haboldt & Co.,New York, 2009]).
From whom acquired by the present owner.

Technical Summary
The support, a thin, off-white laid paper trimmed on all sides, has been adhered to a toned laid paper
secondary support along all but the right corner and at three sites in the center and has been float matted. A
collector’s stamp in black ink is located along the lower left of the reverse of the drawing, and the matreverse is inscribed “No 29 Terbourg.”
The design is a study in light and dark executed in a monochromatic palette. A pale brown wash forms thepreparatory layer, over which a black chalk underdrawing maps out the composition. This is followed bylayers of transparent brown wash applied in small brush strokes of varying density, and lastly contours, facialfeatures, and shadows of the hair were added in black ink applied with the point of a brush. The subtle
chiaroscuro ranges from the light area with only a few strokes of black chalk in the foreground to theenveloping dark washes in the background. The freely drawn black chalk framing lines appear to have been
applied after the washes.
The drawing is unsigned and undated.
The drawing underwent conservation treatment in 2012 and remains in a very good state of preservation.[1]Technical Summary Endnotes

1. Entry based on a 2012 examination and treatment report by Marjorie Shelley, Sherman FairchildConservator in Charge, Sherman Fairchild Center for Works on Paper and Photograph Conservation,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

© 2024 The Leiden Collection