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Lot Essay
The present, previously unpublished picture is here tentatively catalogued as an authentic work by Terborch, datable to the 1660s. Of particularly fine quality are the refined brushwork in the lady's dress and the detailed rendition of the furniture and dog; the subtle tonality is characteristic of Terborch's work of the early 1660s. The composition is comparable with the picture of A woman at her toilet in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, particularly in the arrangements of the standing woman in a nearly identical dress, the draped table, the mirror and the dog.
Such paintings of ladies standing full-length in interiors first appeared in Terborch's oeuvre in circa 1655, one of the first of such being the Woman washing her hands of 1655 in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. After 1660, Terborch's style began to become increasingly refined - the women becoming slenderer and more elongated, and the compositions imbued with a greater sense of space - influenced by French prototypes, as noted in the catalogue of the exhibition, Gerard Terborch, Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1974, p.163. Characteristic of this period is the painting of Curiosity in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and that recorded in the Buhrle collection, Zurich (S.J. Gudlaugsson, Gerard Terborch, 1960, II, p. 149, ill.).
The features of the woman in the present picture are similar to those of the women in the pictures of A woman playing the theorbo for a cavalier in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Two ladies and a cavalier playing cards in the County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and were presumably all based on the same model.
Such paintings of ladies standing full-length in interiors first appeared in Terborch's oeuvre in circa 1655, one of the first of such being the Woman washing her hands of 1655 in the Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. After 1660, Terborch's style began to become increasingly refined - the women becoming slenderer and more elongated, and the compositions imbued with a greater sense of space - influenced by French prototypes, as noted in the catalogue of the exhibition, Gerard Terborch, Mauritshuis, The Hague, 1974, p.163. Characteristic of this period is the painting of Curiosity in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and that recorded in the Buhrle collection, Zurich (S.J. Gudlaugsson, Gerard Terborch, 1960, II, p. 149, ill.).
The features of the woman in the present picture are similar to those of the women in the pictures of A woman playing the theorbo for a cavalier in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Two ladies and a cavalier playing cards in the County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, and were presumably all based on the same model.