Young Woman Playing The Lute. Gérard Ter Borch (1617-1681) Attributed To

Dutch school of the 17th century around 1660. Oil on canvas Presented in a beautiful 17th century wooden frame carved with scrolls, shells, fruit and foliage. Total dimensions: 45 x 40 cm. The canvas alone: 28 x 22 cm The subject of this charming painting, very fashionable in the United Provinces in the 17th century, represents an intimate, serene, "bourgeois" interior, in which the characters, as if surprised by the painter, are occupied to their activities. On our painting, under the tender gaze of a young man, a young woman plays the lute while staring at the viewer. In the background, entering the room, a servant brings a basket of fruit. On the table draped with a piece of cloth, is placed a blue and white earthenware pitcher from Delft. This interior is sober and nicely decorated. The characters' clothes are painted with delicacy and the textures are enhanced by the harmony of the light entering the room. Born in Zwolle in 1617 and died in Deventer in 1681, Gérard Ter Borch took up the genre scenes inaugurated by painters like Codde, Duyster and ennobled them by placing them in bourgeois interiors, endeavoring to describe refined intimate scenes, full of restraint and full of psychological nuances. Ter Borch frequented Pieter Molyn's studio in Haarlem where he was a member of the Gilde in 1635, then traveled extensively, notably in Spain, France and Italy. He went to Münster at the time of the diplomatic congress where he was employed as a portrait painter and executed The Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (National Gallery, London). In 1654, he settled in Deventer where he carried out a much appreciated activity as a portraitist while taking part in the political life of his city. His first drawings - characters taken from life, landscapes, scenes of daily life -, executed during his apprenticeship with his father, Gerard Ter Borch le Vieux (1584-1642), reveal a precocious talent and his taste for realism. More interesting with Gerard Ter Borch is his role as the introducer of the intimate scenes that appeared with the generation born between 1610 and 1620. A small group of artists, trained in Hals' studio, is at the origin of the Dutch genre painting, and the early works of Ter Borch, depicting figures of soldiers eating, smoking or playing cards. From 1640, and perhaps influenced by Velázquez, Ter Borch made a name for himself with his bare portraits in which he neutralized the background to arrive at an extraordinary psychological truth. From 1660, he acquires a more enriched formula where he insists more on the rendering of the clothes and the accessories, places the characters in a room, a little to the detriment of the intensity of the interior life. Very good state of conservation. Sold with invoice & certificate