The Music Lesson
<p>Gerard ter Borch specialized in small-scale portraits and scenes of everyday life. He often painted images like this one, featuring military officers and elegant young women conversing, making music, or exchanging letters. Here, a lady plays an elaborate stringed instrument, the double-headed lute, while her companion marks the tempo for her. He is presumably her music instructor, but the similarity in their ages and the presence of the bed in the background make the precise relationship of the figures tantalizingly ambiguous.</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1665
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 63.6 × 50.4 cm (25 × 19 7/8 in.); Framed: 84.8 × 70.8 × 6.4 cm (33 3/8 × 27 7/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Gerard ter Borch
Artist
Painting
Gerard ter Borch, also known as Gerard Terburg, was a Dutch Golden Age painter mainly of genre subjects. He influenced his fellow Dutch painters Gabriel Metsu, Gerrit Dou, Eglon van der Neer and Johannes Vermeer. According to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Ter Borch "established a new framework for subject matter, taking people into the sanctum of the home", showing the figures' uncertainties and expertly hinting at their inner lives. His influence as a painter, however, was later surpassed by Vermeer.
Full artist profile →More
More by Gerard ter Borch
The Music Lesson
1665 · Oil on canvas
The Charlatan (recto), and Two Standing Figures (verso)
1630 · Pen and brown ink, with brush and gray wash, with traces of graphite, over traces of black chalk (recto), and red and black chalk (verso), on ivory laid paper
Group of Four Men in Togas
1627 · Black chalk, on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory laid card
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Gerard ter Borch
- Year
- 1665
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 63.6 × 50.4 cm (25 × 19 7/8 in.); Framed: 84.8 × 70.8 × 6.4 cm (33 3/8 × 27 7/8 × 2 1/2 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1665-013618
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified