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Gerard ter Borch
Dutch, 1617 - 1681
He was trained in Zwolle, perhaps by Arent van Bolten ( fl Zwolle, c. 1580–1600). At the age of 18 he went to southern Europe, staying until c. 1612; he spent seven years in Italy, mostly in Rome, but also in Naples. In Rome he lived in the Palazzo Colonna, from the gardens of which he drew the Temple of the Sun (1610; Rotterdam, Boymans–van Beuningen), an ancient ruin. Most of his drawings (often dated between 1607 and 1610) were contained in a sketchbook, which he brought back to Zwolle and dismantled (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). Executed with fine parallel pen hatching with a lively sense of accent and contour, these sheets follow the tradition of 16th-century Roman topographical drawing established by Maarten van Heemskerck, Paul Bril and others. Like his forerunners, Gerard recorded ancient buildings and ruins, sometimes with archaeological exactitude, sometimes with a more picturesque intent (e.g. View of the Pincio, Rome, 1609; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). His most innovative drawings in terms of subject-matter depict scenes of everyday life and the landscape of the surrounding Roman Campagna. He also made intimate studies of the grounds of the Villa Madama outside Rome, to which he added watercolour washes for atmospheric effects. All the Roman drawings, even those executed solely in pen and ink, are characterized by subtlety of light and shadow. He also visited Naples, which he recorded in a view dated 1610. He had plans for a trip in 1611 from Naples to Spain in the company of the Spanish Viceroy, but he literally missed his boat (in the process losing a number of paintings on board). Several of his drawings indicate that while travelling en route to and from Italy he stayed in Nîmes and Bordeaux (possibly on his way south) and Venice (probably returning north).
By mid-1612 he was back in Zwolle, where on 28 March 1613 he married Anna Bufkens, who gave birth to Gerard ter Borch four years later. Dated drawings from this period have survived in some numbers: they represent Old and New Testament subjects, devotional pieces and Ovidian love stories, all subjects associated with Amsterdam and Utrecht history painting (most now in Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). He abandoned the fine draughtsmanship of his Italian work for experimentation in some sheets with a relatively expressive linear vocabulary and in others with a tighter manner characterized by firm contours, emphatic wash modelling and increasing abstraction. By the late 1610s his style began to harden and become mannered. His one painting to survive, Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac (1618; Zwolle, Prov. Overijssels Mus.), shows a connection with Utrecht Mannerism. He may have made other paintings, but Gerard certainly limited his artistic activity after 1621, by which time he had succeeded his father, Harmen, in the position of Licence Master.
Despite his professional responsibilities, Gerard found time in the 1620s for some artistic activity. Most of his creative energy seems to have been devoted to supervising his first-born’s efforts at drawing, but he also produced a number of colourful, witty and lively drawings which were entered into a hand-written amatory songbook (now in the Atlas van Stolk, Rotterdam, Hist. Mus.), to which Roeland van Laer (d Genoa 1635) and Pieter van Laer later contributed watercolour drawings. Perhaps responding to his own pedagogical theory, he returned to drawing from life in the 1630s in a handful of renderings of children and the local landscape, but generally he seems to have practised his art vicariously through his talented offspring.
Alison McNeil Kettering. "Borch, ter." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T010044pg1 (accessed May 8, 2012).
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