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

ca. 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 29 Terbourg”
GB-110How to cite
Schatborn, Peter. “Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon” (2017). In The Leiden Collection Catalogue,
2nd ed. Edited by Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. New York, 2017–20. https://theleidencollection.com/artwork/a-littlegirl-at-a-table-holding-a-slice-of-melon/ (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 narrativeoccurs.

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

something apparently has grabbed her attention. More fruit, or some otherunidentifiable 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 and brown ink, sometimes toreinforce 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 effectof 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 hissecond 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 his third wife,
none of them is likely to be the subject of this drawing, as they were not born

Fig 1. Gerard ter Borch the Elder,Head of a Little Girl Wearing aNecklace, Bending Forward, early
1630s, pen and brown ink, brushand gray wash over traces of black
chalk, Rijksprentenkabinet,
Amsterdam, inv. no. RPT-1887-A-768

until the second half of the 1630s. Furthermore, Ter 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
his supervision, no doubt taking his drawings as their example. Drawing fromlife, particularly the human figure, was, like drawing from the imagination, animportant part of artistic instruction. Ter Borch frequently annotated anddated the drawings made by his sons Gerard the Younger (1617–81),
Harmen (1638–77), and Mozes (1645–67), and in a number of instances henoted that they had been made “from life.” On the verso of Gerard theYounger’s drawing Head of a Girl, he wrote “15 December 1633.”[5] Thiswork, and a comparable drawing of a young girl, may have been inspired byGerard the Elder’s Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon, and,indeed, may represent the same model.[6] Watching his father draw the girls
may well have prompted Gerard the Younger to execute his own versions.

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

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 less narrowthan that of her sister Anna,[7] who is depicted—looking somewhat older—inthe drawing Girl Reading, likewise in Amsterdam.[8] The girl wearing anecklace has the same spontaneous look and loose wisps of hair gracing her© 2020 The Leiden Collection

Little Girl at a Table Holding a Slice of Melon
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forehead as the girl in the present drawing. She is shown wearing a necklace
again in a drawing in an album—likewise preserved in Amsterdam—latercompiled 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 was particularly
evident in the 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 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 theRijksmuseum. 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 studio legacy
that has no parallel in work from the seventeenth century. It is likely that thehundred or so drawings by members of the Ter Borch family that can befound in other collections had already been sold or given away in theseventeenth century.

- Peter Schatborn, 2017

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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 olderwoman, she also wears a necklace, as indeed she does in a drawing in a private collection inAmsterdam.
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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Provenance(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 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 a few
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.

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