GERARD TER BORCH THE YOUNGER (ZWOLLE 1617-1681 DEVENTER)

In 1646, after more than a decade of travel through England, Italy, Spain, the Southern Netherlands and France, Gerard ter Borch arrived in Münster as a member of the entourage accompanying the representative of the States of Holland, Adriaen Pauw (1585-1653), at the peace negotiations between the Dutch Republic and Spain that, in 1648, ended the Eighty Years War. It was there that ter Borch probably befriended the man who modelled for the central figure in a flat red beret staring blankly ahead as two companions look on with evident concern. In his entry for the 2004-2005 exhibition on the artist, Arthur Wheelock was the first to suggest that this man is the same as one who appears sixth from left in the back row of ter Borch’s Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster (London, National Gallery), identifiable by his long black hair, distinctive moustache, deeply-set eyes and downward sloping, slightly bulbous nose (op. cit., p. 78). Sturla Gudlaugsson had previously offered a similar proposal with regard to ter Borch’s Encouragement to Drink (op. cit., p. 89, under no. 68; fig. 1; present location unknown), which, on account of its similar dimensions, both Wheelock and Gudlaugsson agree was probably conceived as the pendant to the present painting.
There is good reason for ter Borch to have employed this man as a model within these two paintings, which are traditionally dated to circa 1648⁄9. In the artist’s group portrait commemorating the truce, the man appears as a member of the Spanish court, which associates him with the entourage of the Count of Peñaranda. Ter Borch, too, was friendly with the Count, having not only portrayed him in a small painting on copper, today in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (inv. no. 2529), but likely travelled with him to Brussels following the peace agreement. It was around this time that David Teniers II also moved to Brussels to take up his post as court painter to Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, a point which may explain ter Borch’s contemporary interest in bawdy, monochrome genre scenes of figures smoking and drinking around a table.
Toward the end of the 1640s, ter Borch routinely thought in terms of pendants. He employed the idea to particularly notable effect in the present painting and its presumed pendant. Taken together, the paintings, as Wheelock notes: ‘exhibit … contrary emotional experiences of joy and despair’; and between them combine references to each of the five senses (op. cit.).
This painting was engraved in mezzotint by Jan van Somer in 1676 and is further known through several painted copies, including one of good quality in the John G. Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (inv. no. 1177).