© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
Page 2 of 6

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Sliceof Melonca. early 1630s

Gerard ter Borch the Elder(Zwolle 1582/83 – 1652 Zwolle)

applied with brush point

black chalk, brown ink washes and black ink,
12.1 x 8.9 cm
inscribed on verso with a collector’s mark: “No29 Terbourg”
GB-110How To Cite
Schatborn, Peter. "Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon." In The Leiden Collection Catalogue.
Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017.
https://www.theleidencollection.com/archive/.
This page is available on the site's Archive. PDF of every version of this page is available on the Archive,
and the Archive is managed by a permanent URL. Archival copies will never be deleted. New versions areadded only when a substantive change to the narrative occurs.

© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
Page 3 of 6

The girl holding a slice of melon in both hands looks to her right, where

Comparative Figures

something apparently has grabbed her attention. More fruit, or some otherunidentifiable food, lie in front of her. She wears a wide white collar overher 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 thedrawing with black chalk and then worked it up in pen and brown 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, towhich this work belongs, in which he depicted the two daughters he hadwith his second wife, Geesken van Voerst (1599–in or before 1628).[2] The
elder daughter, Anna, was born on 27 October 1622, and the younger,
Sara, on 23 July 1624.[3] Even though he later had more daughters with hisFig 1. Gerard ter Borch the Elder,
Head of a Little Girl Wearing aNecklace, Bending Forward,
early 1630s, pen and brown ink,brush and gray wash over tracesof black chalk,
Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam,
inv. no. RP-T-1887-A-768

third wife, none of them is likely to be the subject of this drawing, as they
were not born until the second half of the 1630s. Furthermore, Ter Borch
made very few drawings after the mid-1630s, which bolsters the argumentthat this work dates from the early 1630s.[4]Gerard ter Borch the Elder had a number of children, all of whom drew
under his supervision, no doubt taking his drawings as their example.
Drawing from life, particularly the human figure, was, like drawing from theimagination, an important part 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 “from life.” On the verso of
Gerard the Younger’s drawing Head of a Girl, he wrote “15 December1633.”[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

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

draw the girls may well have prompted Gerard the Younger to execute hisown versions.
Gerard the Elder’s drawing probably depicts Sara. She is likely also
portrayed in the drawing Bust-Length Portrait of a Girl with a Necklace , inAmsterdam’s Rijksprentenkabinet (fig 1). Her face was slightly lessnarrow than that of her sister Anna,[7] who is depicted—looking somewhat© 2017 The Leiden Collection

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
Page 4 of 6older—in the drawing Girl Reading, likewise in Amsterdam.[8] The girlwearing a necklace has the same spontaneous look and loose wisps ofhair gracing her forehead as the girl in the present drawing. She is shown
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]It was not unusual for Dutch artists, Rembrandt among them, to seek
models from their immediate family circle. Nevertheless, this practice wasparticularly evident in the Ter Borch family. Not only did Ter Borch theElder regularly depict his children, but Gerard the Younger also portrayedSara, Gesina,[10] and his half-brother Mozes.[11] Surviving works by Mozes
include drawings he made of his parents[12] and of Gesina.[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 atauction 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 made along 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 a studiolegacy 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 thatcan be found in other collections had already been sold or given away inthe seventeenth century.
-Peter Schatborn© 2017 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 anolder woman, she also wears 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.

© 2017 The Leiden CollectionPowered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
Page 6 of 6

Provenance(Sale, Christie’s, New York, 29 January 2009, no. 44, as by Gerard Ter Borch II [BobHaboldt & 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 mat reverse is inscribed “No 29 Terbourg.”
The design is a study in light and dark executed in a monochromatic palette. A pale brown wash
forms the preparatory layer, over which a black chalk underdrawing maps out the composition.
This is followed by layers of transparent brown wash applied in small brush strokes of varying
density, and lastly contours, facial features, 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 afew strokes of black chalk in the foreground to the enveloping 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 ofpreservation.[1]Technical Summary Endnotes

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

© 2017 The Leiden Collection