Gerard ter Borch

Gerard ter Borch
Self-portrait by Gerard ter Borch (c. 1668)
Born	December 1617 Zwolle, Dutch Republic
Died	8 December 1681 (aged 64) Deventer, Dutch Republic
Nationality	Dutch
Known for	Painting

Gerard ter Borch (Dutch: [ɣəˈrɑrt tɛr ˈbɔrx]; December 1617 – 8 December 1681), also known as Gerard Terburg (Dutch: [ɣəˈrɑrt tɛrˈbɵrx]), was a Dutch genre painter who lived in the Dutch Golden Age.

Gerard ter Borch was born in December 1617 in Zwolle in the province of Overijssel in the Dutch Republic.

He received an excellent education from his father Gerard ter Borch the Elder, also an artist, and developed his talent very early. The inscription on a study of a head proves that Ter Borch was at Amsterdam in 1632, where he studied possibly under Willem Cornelisz Duyster or Pieter Codde. Duyster's influence can be traced in a picture bearing the date 1638, in the lonides Bequest (Victoria and Albert Museum). In 1634 he studied under Pieter de Molijn in Haarlem. A record of this Haarlem period is the Consultation (1635) at the Berlin Gallery.

In 1635 he was in London, and subsequently he travelled in Germany, France, Spain and Italy. His sister Gesina also became a painter. It is certain that he was in Rome in 1641, when he painted the small portraits on copper of Jan Six ,A Young Lady (Six Collection, Amsterdam) and the portrait of a Gentlemen (DMK Collection Nuermberg). In 1648 he was at Münster during the meeting of the congress which ratified the treaty of peace between the Spaniards and the Dutch, and executed his celebrated little picture, painted upon copper, of the assembled plenipotentiaries—a work which, along with the a portrait of a Man Standing, now represents the master in the national collection in London. The picture was bought by the marquess of Hertford at the Demidoff sale for 1280, and presented to the National Gallery by Sir Richard Wallace, at the suggestion of his secretary, Sir John Murray Scott.