A. 2
Ter Borch, Gerrit. Interior with a Lady Peeling an Apple. 1660s, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Gerard ter Borch specialised in painting miniature portraits in the 1640s, and later established a new type of small full-length portrait. He also depicted genre scenes. Both portraits and genre scenes are meticulously painted, with particular attention paid to the quality of the costumes, the textures of satins and silks.
Ter Borch was the son of a painter who had lived in Italy, Gerard ter Borch the Elder (1584 - 1662). He was born in Zwolle and was first trained by his father.
Early in his career he was in Amsterdam and Haarlem, and he then travelled widely in Europe. He attended the conference that led to the Treaty of Münster in 1648, portrayed in the Gallery's “The Ratification of the Treaty of Munster.” Ter Borch settled in Deventer in 1654 and developed an individual style of genre painting. These works often showed figures in domestic interiors making music, reading or writing letters, and drinking.
Call me a painter.
Because from this moment, I will start painting.
I will paint myself, my people, and my landscape.
I will paint not only the outside, but also the inside.
I will show you how it feels to be on the inside and the outside.
I will tell you what mattered, what matters, and what doesn’t.
I will fail you, if, all you want is a silky, seamless painting of a beautiful woman.
I will also fail you, if, all you want is an ugly, lawless abstraction of an evil mind.
It’s somewhere in between.
It’s alive with a beating heart, complicated like a tangled web, and contradicting in many ways.
But strange: that is who I am, who you are, how we are made.
And while it is difficult — extremely difficult — to give language and order to this life and humanity, I will try.
On the days I succeed, I will rest, and continue.
On the days I fail, I will also rest, and continue.
In that sense, I may be a scientist.
A painter.
A writer.
A river — that moves and twists and dries and freezes and, flows again.
