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Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Gerard ter Borch

Portrait of a Woman aged Thirty

165(2)
Oil on Copper.
23.9 x 18.9 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
391
(
1934.28
)
ROOM 27
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  

Gerard ter Borch specialised in genre painting and portraiture despite his training as a landscape painter in Haarlem with Pieter Molijn in 1634. As a portraitist Ter Borch worked in small formats, depicting his clients full-length, bust-length or three-quarters. He first used this format, which he appears to have preferred, in the 1640s when he executed one of his most famous works, the Portrait of Helena van der Schalcke, daughter of a preacher, now in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. It deploys certain elements that would become widespread in Ter Borch’s later portraiture such as the simple setting, which in that work consists of a plain background and in other portraits comprises only a few elements of furniture including a table and chair. This austerity relates to the type of sitters depicted, who were members of a middle class that opted for a relatively simple manner of dress and lifestyle. Ter Borch’s painstaking and precise technique is evident in these works in which he carefully modelled the hands and the textiles, both delicately illuminated. The artist’s preference for this format was fully consolidated in 1648 when he painted one of the few scenes of contemporary history to be found in Dutch art: the copper panel of The Swearing of the Ratification of the Treaty of Munster (National Gallery, London). On a small panel, Ter Borch included around 70 figures standing and full-length who form a semi-circle around a table at which the leading dignitaries are seated.

The present pair of portraits is dated to 1652, two years prior to the artist’s move to Deventer and after a period in which he is documented in Delft. Using rectangular shaped panels, Ter Borch painted ovals in dark, neutral tones against which the figures stand out. This was a format that he used in the 1640s and 1650s for an important group of portraits that include husband and wife pairs. When he studied these two panels, Gudlaugsson dated them to around 1640 on stylistic grounds. He also noted various pentimenti in the collars of both figures and in the woman’s coif and considered that this indicated that Ter Borch subsequently retouched the paintings, thus explaining the date of 1652 in the background of the male portrait. He suggested that this subsequent alteration may have been due to the artist’s desire to bring the sitter’s clothes into line with fashion at the time. Ivan Gaskell and Emil Bosshard carefully studied these areas and rejected the idea of subsequent re-painting. They detected a different technique in the areas singled out by Gudlaugsson as well as natural wear of the pictorial materials used.

Mar Borobia

17th Century - Dutch paintingPaintingOilCopper
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Portrait of a Woman aged Thirty. Retrato de una mujer a la edad de treinta años, 165[2]
Portrait of a Woman aged Thirty
Gerard ter Borch

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Portrait of a Woman aged Thirty. Retrato de una mujer a la edad de treinta años, 165[2]
Portrait of a Woman aged Thirty
Gerard ter Borch

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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