gerard ter borch's portraits for the deventer elite

Gerard ter Borch's Portraits for the Deventer EliteAuthor(s): Alison McNeil KetteringSource: Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 27, No. 1/2 (1999),pp. 46-69Published by: Stichting Nederlandse Kunsthistorische PublicatiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3780878Accessed: 07-09-2016 18:42 UTC

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46

Gerard ter Borch's portraits for the Deventer elite*

Alison McNeil Kettering

All the paintings by Gerard ter Borch focus on human

beings; nearly half of them are portraits.' From the early

I640s to i68I, the year before his death, ter Borch por-

trayed scores of sitters, from local patricians to clients of

international stature. His most sustained production of

portraiture occurred after his move to Deventer in I654.

There he created for his fellow citizens a portrait type

rare outside the province of Overijssel: small-scale, full- length, stately in appearance, remarkably spare in set-

ting, yet elaborately framed (figs. 1-4, 8-13). His own

self-portrait adopts this mode (fig. 5). The same austere

pictorial rhetoric (and rich framing) can be found, too,

in his Town council of Deventer (fig. 6), one of the few

group portraits of a Dutch town's regents from the

seventeenth century. An examination of ter Borch's

portraits will reveal how they functioned not only as re-

cords of physical appearance but also as mechanisms for

conceptualizing and shaping the Deventer elite's social

ideals. With these works, ter Borch invented a new pic-

torial identity for his fellow citizens at a time of consid-

erable political tension and economic decline.

GERARD TER BORCH AND DEVENTER For the city of

Deventer, the seventeenth century was no golden age.

Although this old Hanse town had maintained its posi-

tion as an international commercial center well into the

sixteenth century, it suffered greatly during the Revolt.

Thereafter, Deventer lost population and stagnated eco-

nomically. A number of interrelated factors contributed

to this decline: the silting up of the river IJssel, the shift

of trade to the western cities (in particular, to Amster-

dam), the loss of the annual market, and the renewal of a

state of war after i621 .2 By the middle of the seven-

teenth century, Zwolle had in many ways overtaken De-

venter as the "first city" of the province.

Yet Deventer in mid-century offered a good environ-

ment for Gerard ter Borch. He encountered neither

guild restrictions nor significant competition from other

artists.3 Furthermore, at the time of his move there in

I654, the Athenaeum had reached a high point in its de-

velopment. The Deventer Athenaeum-a university in

all but name and degree-granting rights-contributed a

cosmopolitan dimension to the local cultural environ-

ment. Its faculty of distinguished professors (some of

whom claimed international reputations and boasted

impressive libraries), and its heterogeneous student

body, included many from outside the region.4 At the

same time, the theological conservatism promoted by

the ultra-Calvinist preacher Jacob Revius had begun to

recede in favor of greater religious moderation.

* A special note of thanks to Perry Chapman, Ariane van Suchtelen and Hans Luijten, who offered astute and challenging comments on an

earlier version of this essay, and to Irene Groeneweg for the considerable factual information that she put at my disposal. Research for this essay was conducted at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Wassenaar, to whose staff I wish to express my warmest thanks.

I For a chronological discussion of ter Borch's portraits within the context of his entire oeuvre, see S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert ter Borch, 2

vols. The Hague I959-60. Gudlaugsson's catalogue numbers are re- ferred to below as "Gudl."

2 P. Holthuis, Frontierstad bij het scheiden van de markt. Deventer: militair, demografisch, economisch, I578-I648 (diss.), Deventer 1993. Holthuis discusses the contraction in Deventer's economy. Only the gingerbread companies, bombazine weaving mill and bronze foundry reached markets beyond the region. The town's increased importance

as a border fortress counterbalanced these declines only to a limited ex- tent.

3 Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note I), vol. I, P. 95. 4 W. Frijhoff, "Deventer en zijn gemiste universiteit: het Athenae-

um in de sociaal-culturele geschiedenis van Overijssel," Overisselse Historische Bzjdragen: Verslagen en Mededeelingen van de Vereeniging tot

Beoefening van Overijsselsch Regt en Geschiedenis 97 (I982), pp. 45-79. See also J. Fortuyn Droogleever, "Gronovius, een hoogleraar aan het Deventer Athenaeum," Deventerjaarboek I987, pp. 53-58. Gronovius was professor of "eloquentie of welsprekendheid," or history and rhetoric, whose learning and mode of teaching gave the Athenaeum a repu- tation in the I640s and I65os equal to that of Leiden University in that subject; see H. Kronenburg, "In en om de Deventer magistraat, 1591- 1795," Verslagen en Mededeelingen, Vereeniging tot Beoefening van Over- ysselsch Regt en Geschiedenis, Deventer 1927, p. 8o.


47

I Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofjan van Duren (i6I3-87), ca. I667.

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lehman Collection

3 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of Willem Marienburgh (I634-17I), ca. I662-64. Prague, Narodni Galerie

2 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofMargaretha van Haexbergen

(I 6I 4-76), ca. I 667. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,

Lehman Collection

4 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of Gertruid Marienburgh (I645-1722),

ca. I662-64. Prague, Narodni Galerie


48 ALISON MCNEIL KETTERING

5 Gerard ter Borch, Self-portrait, ca. I 668. The Hague, Mauritshuis

As welcome as all these factors may have been for the

well-traveled and cosmopolitan ter Borch, none was as

valuable to his professional career as Deventer's ready

clientele for his portraiture. Family connections pro-

vided one avenue to that clientele. One of his father's

relatives was "licentmeester" (license-master) in De-

venter.5 Both his stepmother, Wiesken Matthys, and his

wife, Geertruid Matthys, had been born there, daugh-

ters of a local goldsmith. Geertruid's first marriage-

she had been a widow several years when ter Borch mar-

ried her-was to a member of a Deventer regent family.6 No less than six of Gerard's sitters were related to his

wife through this first marriage.7 Another route to po-

tential sitters came through ter Borch's involvement in

local politics. Granted partial citizenship one year after

his move, and full citizenship a little over a decade later,

he was appointed in i666 a "Gemeensman," or repre-

sentative, of one of the town's eight wards. As such, he

acquired membership in the "Gezworen Gemeente"

(literally, Sworn Community), a municipal body that

advised the powerful and exclusive town council. He

served in this capacity until his death.8

A large majority of Dutch portraits was commis-

sioned by well-to-do citizens, whether prosperous mer-

chants and professionals, or members of city patriciates. Ter Borch's commissions followed a similar pattern.

While a few of his sitters came from the Overijssel nobility, most belonged to Deventer's political elite, and a

much smaller number to the elite of Amsterdam.9 De-

venter clients for ter Borch's portraits included (among

others) Willem Marienburgh (fig. 3), Jan van Duren

(fig. i), Aelbert and Hendrik Nilant, Gerhard van Such-

5 The license-master was ter Borch's cousin-once-removed, Be- rend ter Borch. Berend's son Hendrik became high sheriff in I 674, ap-

pointed by Willem in immediately after the occupation; soon after-

wards he became a burgomaster. By the time of his death in i68o he

was one of the richest men in Deventer; see Kronenburg, op. cit. (note

4), p. 83. Gerard ter Borch apparently put into Hendrik's safekeeping

The ratification of the Peace of Munster when he left Deventer for Am- sterdam in i672.

6 His name was Matthijs Daems. For his family tree see Gudlaugs-

son, op. cit. (note I), vol. 2, p. 50, and on Geertruid's good financial po-

sition at the time of her marriage to ter Borch, ibid., vol. I, p. 24.

7 M.E. Houck, Mededeelingen betreffende Gerhard ter Borch, Zwolle I899, p. I34a.

8 In ter Borch's time, the Gezworen Gemeente numbered 48 men,

six per district. The group met at least quarterly at the council's re-

quest. Ter Borch represented the Engestraat ward, along with Gerhard

van Suchtelen, one of his sitters; see Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note i), vol.

2, pp. 26-27.

9 It is difficult to find information either about the regents' occupa-

tions or, indeed, about whether they continued pursuing them once

they entered the town administration. Ter Borch's patrons did include

a preacher, Jan van Duren (Gudl. 292) and a few members of the nobil-

ity, including Unico van Ripperda, the commander of the company

that tried and failed to stop the advancing Munster and Cologne forces

in I 672 (Gudl. 286), and Johan van Reede-Ginkel (Gudl. 264). See the

epilogue below. The attributes or settings of several of the anonymous

portraits suggest the sitters were merchants: for example, the Portrait

ofa man (Gudl. 224; London, Samuels Collection), bears some similar-

ity to the figure of Schellinger in ter Borch's lost group portrait of the

family of the merchant Sybrand Schellinger. See Gudl. 225, and Gesi-

na ter Borch's copy in A.M. Kettering, Drawingsfrom the Ter Borch stu-

dio estate in the Rijksmuseum, 2 vols., The Hague i988, vol. 2, p. 7i6.


Gerard ter Borch's portraits for the Deventer elite 49

6Grarteh Theto

6 Gerard ter Borch, The town council of Deventer, I 667. Deventer, Town Hall

telen, Frederik Bannier, Jan Roever, Herman Quadack-

er, Gisbert Cuper (fig. 20), Cornelis Vos, and Gosewijn

Hogers (fig. I2), not to mention their wives from the

Wedeus, Rouse and van der Cruysse families. Nearly all

of the men served at one time or another as burgomas-

ters on the i 6-member town council (I 2 "schepenen" or

aldermen, and four "raden" or councillors). Many of

them were university graduates. In Deventer during

this period--the stadholderless era of the i65os and

i66os--they formed a privileged and close-knit group

that married and remarried amongst themselves, and

successfully kept power in their own hands. The crisis

years of the German occupation, I672-74, and the sub-

sequent change of regime engineered by the new stad-

holder, Willem iII, offered only temporary and manage-

able interruptions to the smooth running of the

oligarchy.'0 In this regard, Deventer resembled many

other Dutch towns during this period. Their patriciates

io Kronenburg, op. cit. (note 4), p. 73. Between I59I and 1795, only 125 families were present in the annual lists of aldermen and coun-

cillors, increasingly fewer as time passed. The primary source for Kro-

nenburg was G. Dumbar, Het kerkelyk en wereltlyk Deventer, 2 vols.,

Deventer I732, vol. I, pp. 95-sIO'. According to Holthuis, Gerhard van

Suchtelen, the grandfather of one of ter Borch's clients, and Willem

Marienburgh, an actual client (Gudl. 203, posthumously painted),

were "top scorers" as office holders; see Holthuis, op. cit. (note 2), p.

124, note 56.



were increasingly closed to outsiders and increasingly

eager to use office-holding as a way of maintaining their power, wealth and stature. "

This concentration of power did not pass unobserved

by later commentators. Early in the eighteenth century, an anonymous writer inserted his opinions into the mar-

gins of his copy of Arnold Moonen's Korte chronyke der

stadt Deventer."2 Often beginning his observations with

the words "bij mijn tijt" ("in my time"), this amateur

historian reacted to the changes in governance in recent

generations, complaining about the current burgomas-

ters' lack of public spirit and their self-serving practices: "Door eijgen baet/ Het lant vergaet/ dog de regterhant

des Heeren/ Kan alles verkeeren" ("Selfishness ruins the land, but the right hand of the Lord [the Lord's

judgment] can change everything").'3 These practices included granting favors to their kinsmen, as the council

7 Bartholomeus van der Heist, Portrait ofa gentleman, ca. i 669. Minneapolis, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, John R. Van Derlip Fund

chairman Adriaen van Boekholdt had obviously done by

appointing his nephew and son-in-law, Arnold, to the

council (see fig. 6, third from the right). 4 Still more no-

torious was Hendrik Nilant, dubbed the "King of De-

venter" by his pro-Orange opponents: in i 672 four Ni-

lants held public office simultaneously. No longer could

ordinary citizens become regents, the anonymous writer

grumbled, nor a "simple weaver... become sexton."'5

While united in their desire to keep themselves and

their relatives in power, members of the Deventer re-

gent class were certainly not immune to the factional

strife that divided Overijssel during this period. Within

the province, Deventer was generally considered to be

"anti-Orange," and therefore in conflict politically with

Zwolle and Kampen, both dominated by "pro-Orange"

elites.'6 But pro-Orangists were also present, and active,

on the Deventer council. During the i650s, the above-

ii Kronenburg, op. cit. (note 4), p. 83, states that the largest total

assets of any person in Deventer in I683 were those of Hermana van

der Cruysse, widow of Abraham van Suchtelen (Gudl. 2I0). After her

came Arnold van Boekholt (see below); Gerrit van Suchtelen, Herma-

na's son (Gudl. 2I3); the widow of the artist's cousin Hendrik ter

Borch (I634-80); and the widow of licence-master Marienburgh. On

the elite in Holland cities, by comparison, see L. Kooijmans, Onder re- genten: de elite in een Hollandse stad, Hoorn, I700-I780, Dieren I985,

and J.L. Price, Holland and the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth centu-

ry: the politics ofparticularism, Oxford I994, pp. 39, 48-49.

12 The comments were written on pages inserted into a copy of the

I 714 edition of Arnold Moonen's Korte chronyke der stadt Deventer now

in the Stads- or Athenaeum Bibliotheek, Deventer (ed. princ. Deven-

ter i688). As a result, the addition of "bij mijn tijt" is somewhat puz- zling and may refer to the experiences of an older relative. My thanks to

Jan Bedaux and Irene Groeneweg for information on and discussions

of these insertions.

13 A.C.F. Koch, "In en om het stadhuis van Deventer," in In en om

het Deventerstadhuis, ed. A.C.F. Koch, Deventer I982, pp. I3-I5. For

further comments on the self-seeking regents (the only transcribed, printed page of notes), see J.J. van Doorninck, "Levenswijze te De-

venter in I65o," Bijdragen tot de Geschiedenis van Overijssel 2 (I875), pp. 84-85.

I4 Van Doorninck, op. cit. (note 13), note 28, facing p. 143 of

Moonen's section.

I5 Ibid., note 29, facing p. i8 of the appended section written by Gualterus Sylvanus, Beschryvinge der stad Deventer, Deventer 1714: "...een slegten wever tot koster wiert gemaekt."

i6 W.J. Formsma, "De nieuwe geschiedenis, staatkundig be-

schouwd," in Geschiedenis van Overijssel, ed. B.H. Slicher van Bath, Deventer I970, pp. I27-29. Rutger van Haersolte, an Orange appoint-

ee, was accused of corruption by Hendrik Nilant and his followers. On

the political tensions in Overijssel see also A.J. Veenendaal, "Gisbert

Cuper I644-I7I6," in: T.J. de Vries, Overijselse portretten, Zwolle I958, p. 8o, and J. Israel, The Dutch Republic: its rise, greatness, andfall I477-i806, Oxford I995, pp. 733-36.


Gerard ter Borch's portraits for the Deventer elite

8 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofa young man, ca. I662-63. 9 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofa young woman, ca. I662-63. London, National Gallery Cleveland, Museum of Art

mentioned power broker Hendrik Nilant led the domi-

nant anti-Orange faction, while chief among his pro-

Orange antagonists was Adriaen van Boekholdt. In I674 and i675, the pro-Orangists enjoyed a brief moment of

ascendancy. After driving out the Germans, the new

stadholder Willem in dismissed the entire Deventer council, Nilant among them, and appointed a more

sympathetic new body. This new, pro-Orange council

included Gisbert Cuper, the esteemed rector of the

Athenaeum, Hendrik ter Borch, nephew of the artist,

and a quickly reappointed Arnold van Boekholdt (Adri-

aen's heir).'7 Some years later, Cuper authored (or shared the authorship of) the "Consideratien," a particularly

strident pamphlet castigating the anti-Orangists as the

"white-bread children of Deventer," defending Orange

authority over the town government, and arguing for a

more modern, centralized, national regime.' 8

Whatever ter Borch's own political inclinations, he

likely kept them to himself in order to encourage sitters

from the entire political spectrum. Certainly he received

commissions from both anti-Orangists--such as Nilant

and Hogers (fig. I2), and Orangists--such as Cuper (fig. 20) and Vos.'9 Just as his career seemed untouched by

Deventer's slow economic decline, it also suffered very

little from factional strife.

It should be emphasized that ter Borch, within a short

period of time, created a remarkably impressive market

for portraits in Deventer. This was all the more aston-

17 C. Wilkeshuis, "De capitulatie van Deventer in I672," Spiegel

der Historie 2:2 (I967), p. 300, on the pro- and anti-Orange factions. My thanks to Andrea Gasten for this reference.

I8 Cuper was appointed to the town council by Willem iII in I675. See Formsma, op. cit. (note i6), p. I30, and Veenendaal, op. cit. (note i 6), pp. 82-83. The anonymous tract, likely written wholly or in part by

Cuper, was titled Consideratien ende redenen, daer by de nootsaeckelijck-

heyt van de stadthouderlijcke regeringe in desen staet ende Republique, The Hague i677, p. 20 (W.P.C. Knuttel, Catalogus van de pamfletten-verza-

meling berustende in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 9 vols, The Hague 1889- I920, vol. 2, nr. I 1514).

I9 See Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note I), vol. 2, for H. Nilant (Gudl.

250), C. Vos (Gudl. i98) and G. Cuper (Gudl. 268).



ishing in the light of the dearth of an earlier painting tra-

dition there. Judging by the scarcity of extant pictures,

the upper bourgeoisie seems to have given little thought

to portraiture before ter Borch's arrival. The few por-

traits that survive were painted by anonymous artists

working in conservative styles.20 Lifesize and half-

length in format, their settings consisting only of the

conventional table or chair (if that), these works can be

characterized as dry, static, visual reports.2' Ter Borch

set about elevating his fellow citizens' expectations as to

what could be achieved with portraiture by offering

them a new, more desirable portrait type, of undeniable

quality. But, as we shall see, he adapted the earlier por-

traits' conservatism to his (and his patrons') own ends.

From the late I650s through the I670s ter Borch pro-

vided his clientele with small-scale representations

painted on canvas, wood and copper. Not one of these

works measured more than 70 cm in height, some were

nearly miniatures.22 A number of the portraits present-

ed their subjects in half- and three-quarter-length for-

mats. Sitters appeared in neutral spaces, or were seated

at tables in studies, or situated out-of-doors against rocky

outcroppings. But ter Borch's clientele demonstrated its

most remarkable allegiance to small-scale portraits that

featured a straightforwardly presented, full-length figure,

placed within a spare setting. About 6o of these works

have survived, of which about 22 can be linked to specific

sitters.

Precedents for the small-scale, full-length format can

be found in portraits by Hendrik Pot and Thomas de

Keyser that possibly came to ter Borch's attention dur-

ing the i 640s, a period when he began producing several

portraits of his own in this format, now in San Francisco

and Richmond.23 But the relatively strong shadows, the

lively contours, as well as the men's cocked hats and as-

sertive body language in these earlier works contrast

with the stately formality that was to dominate the later

portraits produced in Deventer.

Significantly, of ter Borch's later full-length por-

traits, all but two of the identified sitters belonged to

Deventer's regent class. The two exceptions were a

married pair, not from Deventer, actually, but from

Zutphen, the largest town to the south, a ride of just

three hours away.24 Ter Borch portrayed the couple ear-

ly in his development of the portrait type, shortly after

his move to Deventer. It is possible, of course, that vari-

ous unidentified full-length portraits likewise depicted

citizens of towns other than Deventer. But evidence

suggests otherwise. While his genre paintings found

many buyers outside the region (primarily in the west-

ern Dutch cities), a good argument can be made that

nearly all of his full-length portraits were produced and

viewed locally.

The particular portrait type that ter Borch created for

the Deventer elite found little parallel elsewhere. In

Amsterdam during this period, wealthy patrons favored

Bartholomeus van der Helst for his lively, robust com-

positions, enhanced with such accessories as classical

columns, curtains and landscape backgrounds, and for

his skill at showing off his sitters' rich attire and animat-

ed demeanor (fig. 7). At the same time, both in Amster-

dam and in neighboring western Dutch cities, an alter- native portrait type flourished--the newly stylish van

Dyckian mode, developed by such artists as Nicolaes

20 Koch, op. cit. (note I3), figs. 2, 4-7. The latter depict Assuerus Strockel or Strokkel (I600-70), municipal secretary of Deventer, and Barbara Glagau or Glagow (I599-I659), private collection, anonymous, both I633, canvas, I27 X 96 cm (IB 48594). Their son Jan appears at the right among the secretaries in The town council ofDeventer (fig. 6) and their son-in-law Willem Nilant sits third from the left.

2I Seventeenth-century portraitists generally placed a table next to a male sitter (as a reference to his professional life) and a chair under or next to a female (perhaps as an attribute of her association with the household), a practice inherited from the sixteenth century.

22 Ter Borch did occasionally choose somewhat larger sizes for portraits of his own family. For example, the Portrait of Moses ter Borch (Gudl. 227), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, measures 77.5 x 58 cm.

23 Portrait of a man (Gudl. i6) and Portrait of a woman (Gudl. I7), both in Richmond (Virginia), Museum of Fine Arts, and Portrait of a man, San Francisco, De Young Memorial Museum (Gudl. i8). Gud-

laugsson also included the Portrait ofa Flemish woman in Zurich, Brun- ner Collection, in this group (Gudl. I9), but the attribution is not secure. See A.J. Adams, The paintings of Thomas de Keyser (1596/7- i667): a study ofportraiture in seventeenth-century Amsterdam (diss.), 4 vols., Ann Arbor I985, vol. I, pp. 200f, for a comprehensive discussion of the format. Velazquez's understated portraits of Philip iv are often mentioned as another forerunner of ter Borch's full-lengths, and indeed some evidence suggests that ter Borch had himself received a commission to portray Philip during his trip to Spain in the late I630s. See Gudl. 9 for a copy of ter Borch's (probable) original, small-scale standing portrait, a youthful work. See also Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note I), vol. I, pp. 36-39. In my opinion, though, neither Velazquez's large- scale state portraits of the monarch nor ter Borch's own-small panel bear much similarity aesthetically, functionally, or ideologically- with ter Borch's Deventer regent portraits.

24 Gudl. I 17 and I i 8, Zurich, private collection.



Ii

io Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofa gentleman in gray, ca. I665-66. Great Britain, private collection

Maes, Michiel van Musscher, and ter Borch's own stu-

dent Caspar Netscher. Originating at the English court, and subsequently adapted to Dutch needs, this portrait type featured graceful bodies dressed in satin, decorated

with abundant drapery and set in poses of effortless dignity. Fluid, intimate and generalized, such portraits al-

lowed sitters to claim an elevated social identity and, si-

multaneously, removal from a specific time and place. Ter Borch made very few concessions to this mode, and

then only in the I670s for patrons probably connected with Amsterdam rather than with Deventer.25 (ter

i i Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofa young woman, ca. i665-66. Great Britain, private collection

Borch's Amsterdam portraits are treated separately in

the Epilogue.)

Netscher, like his former teacher, worked "in little." But in contrast to ter Borch, he limited his representa-

tions to a partial-figure-rather than a full-length-for-

mat, and strove for an intimacy and accessibility in his

images appropriate to a precious object examined at close range.26 Moreover, by developing a harmonious movement throughout the picture space and by adding

graceful drapery and ornamentation, Netscher suc-

ceeded in avoiding that "doll-like effect [of figures]...

25 See the epilogue for comments on ter Borch's Portrait ofjracob de

Graeff, I673, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum (Gudl. 265). A few other portraits of unidentified sitters dating from around i68o (Gudl. 282-85)

show some influence of the more graceful portrait modes practiced by

Netscher and others. For illustrations of the "van Dyckian" mode of

portraiture see A.M. Kettering, "Gentlemen in satin: masculine ideals

in later seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture," ArtJournal 56 (I 997), figs. 2, 4-6.

26 M.E. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and late seventeenth-century

Dutch painting (diss.), New York I99I, p. 126. My thanks to Dr Wiese-

man both for providing me with information from her dissertation and

for discussions about attributions.



immovable, dumb and little, and therefore unnatural" that the theorist-painter Gerard de Lairesse decried as

endemic to small-scale portraits.27

Van der Helst, conforming more closely to Dutch

portrait norms, preferred to portray his sitters "as large as life," but again, he limited them to half or three-quarter-length formats. One of the reasons commonly sug-

gested for such a preference is that Dutch houses, even

those of the wealthy, offered too little wall space to ac-

commodate a lifesize, full-length portrait.28 But a more

fundamental cause for most Dutch patrons' resistance

to whole-length portraiture was probably the format's

traditional association with images of royalty and nobil-

ity. Full-length Dutch portraits were produced prima-

rily for the courts of The Hague and Leeuwarden.29

Ter Borch's portraits of the Deventer regents, then,

form something of an anomaly within Dutch art of the

period. He devised a new portrait mode that reconciled

the traditionally noble and aristocratic associations of

the full-length format with the ideology of local bur-

ghers, whose values were civic and republican. Clearly,

he was giving his Deventer patrons what they wanted.

THE DEVENTER TOWN COUNCIL Before discussing the

single-figure portraits in greater depth, I would like to

turn to ter Borch's large group portrait, The town council

ofDeventer (fig. 6), painted for the town hall in I 667, the

one instance in which many of the regents mentioned

above were gathered into a single painting. This canvas

differed from the single-figure portraits both in size and

purpose. Whereas the individual portraits were private

works for domestic viewing, this was a civic statement,

created for a public setting. Nevertheless it will shed

light on how portraiture functioned for the Deventer

elite.

Despite the town's gradual economic decline, it en-

joyed a temporary revitalization during the i65os and i66os that allowed new civic building (and rebuilding)

activity. These were the decades following the conclu-

sion of the Eighty Years' War when Republic-wide eco-

nomic restructuring contributed to a prosperity that

even Overijssel shared. At Deventer town hall, funds were found to renovate the treasurer's chamber ("nieu-

we camer") in the main wing first. Soon afterwards

(i 662), Vingboons redesigned the Wanthuis, the adjoin-

ing wing along the Polstraat.30

Then, in i665, new paneling was installed in the council chamber, again in the main section of the build-

ing.3' The paneling consisted of carved, high-backed,

oak benches for 14 of the burgomasters and a somewhat

grander, central section built a step higher that acted as

a kind of double "throne" for the two chairmen of the

council, the pair with the greatest seniority and power. This last section, bearing the arms of Deventer on its

pediment, was decorated with various tangible symbols

of authority such as clusters of arrows, shackles and

chains, rolls of paper and bundles of pens, interspersed

with snakes and festoons.32 On the wall directly above

this "throne" there probably hung a painted depiction

of The Last judgment flanked by medieval executioners' swords mounted on boards. Both the painting and the

swords were provided with elaborate wooden frames by

the town sculptor Derck Daniels.33 The central, throne-

like section survives in situ today, as the medieval

27 Gerard de Lairesse, Het groot schilderboek, 2 vols., Amsterdam I707, VOl. 2, p. 29: "Van gelvken is het met een kleen conterfeitsel, 't welk niets in zich heeft dat na de natuur gelykt, dan alleen de trekken in it wezen; wordende echter het zelve aangemerkt als een poppetie: daar

nochtans de middelen genoegsaam bekend zvn om het levensgroot te doen schynen, ja beweegen en spreeken, by manier van zeggen: maar evenwel verwerpt men de zelve, laatende het Afbeeldsel liever onbe- weegelyk, stom en kleen, en by gevolg onnatuurlyk blyven." See also idem, The art ofpainting, trans. J.F. Fritsch, London 1778, p. 278, "So it is with a portrait in little, which has nothing of nature but the features

and looks like a puppet; whereas there are well-known methods to make it appear as big as the life; nay, to move and speak, as I say; but being slighted, the figure seems immovable, dumb and little, and therefore unnatural."

28 Adams, op. cit. (note 23), vol. I, p. 206.

29 J. Woodall, "Introduction: facing the subject," in Portraiture, facing the subject, ed. J. Woodall, Manchester 1997, p. 2. See also J.

Woodall, "Sovereign bodies: the reality of status in seventeenth-century Dutch portraiture," in ibid., pp. 75-100.

30 J.J. van Nijendaal, "De bouwgeschiedenis 'van het Deventer stadhuis in het tijdvak i650-i979," in Koch, op. cit. (note 13), pp. 79- 83. See also K. Ottenheym, Philips Vingboons (I607-1678), Architect, Zutphen I989, pp. 135-36.

3I B. Dubbe, "Het stadhuisinterieur en voorwerpen uit het oud bezit," in Koch, op. cit. (note 13), pp. 60-64.

32 Ibid., fig. 27.

33 On Daniels (i632-1710), see B. Dubbe, "De Deventer beeld-

houwer Derck Daniels (i632-17i0)," Antiek I6 (anuarv I982), pp. 36I-82. The framed swords still exist today, and hang on the wall op- posite. The existence and position of The Lastjudgment, however, can only be inferred from the wall decoration represented in ter Borch's The town council of Deventer. As pointed out below, ter Borch did take liberties with reality.



swords and their frames. But our only visual representa-

tion of the other details and their arrangement is to be

found in ter Borch's portrait of the councillors, which is

set, appropriately enough, in the council chamber.

Commissioned by the burgomasters during the renova-

tion years, the painting bears the date I667 inscribed

next to ter Borch's name on the cartellino on the floor.

The portrait situated the i 6 burgomasters or council-

lors in a row along the three walls of the chamber. Seven

sit to the left, seven to the right of the two chairmen,

who are seated behind a raised table in the center. In the

foreground, four secretaries gather around a second ta-

ble. The arrangement of the burgomasters was deter-

mined largely by seniority, with the longest-serving

clustered in the center. Some of them had already served

as burgomasters for decades: the two chairmen, Jan

Sticke and Jan van Schriek, for 3 I and 26 years respec-

tively; Hendrik Nilant, to their right, for 24 years; and

Jan van Duren, to their left, for 23 years.34 Around I669,

the painting was installed not in the council chamber

but above the chimney in the Great Hall of the Want-

huis,35 which functioned primarily as the space in which

the Gezworen Gemeente, the body to which ter Borch

belonged, met several times a year. The canvas has always been assumed to show off the

newly renovated council chamber. As Dubbe has ob-

served, however, it does not depict Daniels's new panel-

ing, with its graceful garlands, but the older Renaissance

wainscoting that Daniels replaced.36 Ter Borch took other liberties as well. Selecting a high vantage point, he flattened the room, eliminated the windows providing light along the northeast wall, and directed the lighting

unnaturalistically from both left and right. The resulting image was quite removed from a realistic description of the actual council gathering in the actual chamber (whether pre- or post-renovation). Rather, this mode of presentation--a strictly symmetrical construction, viewed

from on high-conformed to the way great national as-

semblies were rendered in historical prints.37

The town council of Deventer differed from these

prints in one important respect, for the requirements of

group portraiture meant that all the participants needed

to face out toward the viewer. The burgomasters appear

as a long frieze of staring figures, barely individualized,

their black attire relieved only by their square, white

collars. The tight unity of this ensemble belies the polit-

ical divisiveness we know to have been rampant within

the group. There is little interplay between the burgo-

masters and the four secretaries in the foreground, and

almost no narrative to suggest participation in some

common act. Only the action of the secretary Rutger

Tichler breaks the symmetry: standing, and having dof-

fed his hat out of deference, he submits a document to

the chairmen.

The independence of these self-contained figures,

combined with the consistent, neutral background, the

even lighting, the minimal decoration and the strict

symmetry of the composition, give the painting a formal

structure that conveys an appropriate dignity and grav-

ity. The burgomasters are shown united, ordered, so-

ber, and very much in charge. Rather than faithfully re-

cording the council chamber's new decorative scheme

(or commemorating its old one) the painting had a larger

purpose--suggesting the council's ideology of good

government, both formally and iconographically. The

timelessness and power of regent authority dominated

this ideology, ennobled by the regents' individual and

collective commitment to such virtues as Reason, Pru-

dence and Justice.38 The virtue of Justice was particularly apt. Beside

their legislative and administrative responsibilities, the burgomasters also acted as a judiciary. At such times, the council chamber functioned as a court of law, a use

made manifest by the inscription on the frieze above the

34 The burgomasters, from left to right, are Antony Menninck, Cornelis Vos, Willem Nilant, Hendrik Marienburgh, Bernard de l'Es- pierre, Hendrick Jordens, Hendrik Nilant, then in the middle Jan Stik- ke and Jan van Schrieck (chairmen of the council), followed by Jan van Duren, Derk Berdenis, Rudolf van Steenbergen, Jan van Suchtelen, Arnold van Boekholt, Andreas Nilant, Arent Arents, and the secretaries Nicolaas Fokking, Jan Rouze, Rutger Tichler (standing), and Jan Strokkel. The identifications were made by M.E. Houck in Gids voor Deventer en omstreken, Deventer 190I, p. 54.

35 Ter Borch was paid a total of I,575 or I,605 guilders, depending on whose statistics one believes: Dubbe, op. cit. (note 31), p. 65, or

Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note I), vol. 2, cat. nr. 205, pp. 27 and 194 re- spectively. The smoke from that chimney caused such damage to the picture that ter Borch was hired to clean it in I678, a mere eight years after its installation. Today, the damage is quite extensive.

36 Dubbe, op. cit. (note 3I), p. 6I, points out the shell motif emphasized in ter Borch's painted woodwork, strikingly absent from the por- tion of Daniels's woodwork still surviving in the room today; see also Dubbe, op. cit. (note 33), p. 367.

37 A.M. Kettering, exhib. cat. Gerard ter Borch and the Treaty of Mlinster, The Hague (Mauritshuis) & Zwolle i998, p. 45.

38 Dubbe, op. cit. (note 3I), p. 63.



chairmen's "throne": "Audi et Alterem Partem" ("Pass

no judgment before hearing the other side"). This was

an old legal injunction that adorned the council chamber

in Amsterdam and elsewhere.39 In the painting, the very

immobility of the regents accords nicely with their posi-

tion as impartial judges. And centered on the wall be-

hind them can be seen the executioners' swords bracket-

ing The Last judgment, those powerful images of heavenly and earthly Justice, certain and severe.

We are fortunate that one of the early histories of De-

venter clearly elucidates the Deventer government's de-

votion to tradition, its commitment to ceremony, and its conservative civic values and ideals. This is Het kerkelyk

en wereldlyk Deventer, 173I, by the historian and De-

venter regent Gerhard Dumbar, municipal secretary for

many years. Writing several generations after ter

Borch's death, Dumbar made no mention of The town

council of Deventer, but he did devote a chapter to the

ceremony that accompanied the selection of new burgo-

masters and Gemeensmannen each year on 2I Febru-

ary, the "Petrikeurdag." Wearing traditional black at-

tire, their bodies wrapped in black capes, the regents gathered at ten in the morning in the town hall, the Ge-

meensmannen grouped according to the ranking of their

wards. They then marched solemnly in pairs across the

square to the church, where they sat in the same order.40

Elsewhere in his description of Deventer, Dumbar

enunciated the ideals of character, manners and morals

toward which citizens strove. He titled the chapter "Der

burgeren en inwooneren zeden, manier van leven, kle-

ding, manmoedigheit, rechten en voorrechten" ("The citizens' and inhabitants' morals, manner of living,

clothing, manliness, rights and privileges"). Though

brief, and promising more than it yields, the chapter

does emphasize the significance of a dignified, conservative outward demeanor, as well as respectable, distin-

guished attire, worn according to each man's rank and

occupation in society.4' Both attire and comportment

conveyed the self-control and judgment that formed the ideal public persona; both functioned as signs of the citi-

zen's service to society. Dumbar's verbal description of the regents' dress and

behavior during the selection ceremony, and his more

general observations concerning Deventer's citizens, correspond perfectly with the concrete visual representation that ter Borch produced in I667. By presenting

his burgomasters in such strict unity, such uniform so-

briety of dress, such formality of pose and demeanor, ter Borch's painting articulated the political legitimacy, in-

deed the moral rightness of this company of men.

The town council ofDeventer, measuring I 86 x 248 cm,

was the largest painting ter Borch ever produced. In the

20 years that separated it from his one previous group

portrait of a political body, the much smaller Swearing

of the oath of ratification of the Treaty of Miinster, I 648

(45.4 x 58.5 cm), ter Borch had learned to work on a larger scale.42 The impressive dimensions of the De-

venter work and its imposing physical presence were

amplified by a custom-made frame a gilded, heavily sculptural wooden extravagance by the busy Derck Daniels.

As many recent scholars writing about frames have

emphasized, seventeenth-century viewers considered

picture and frame to be conceptually united, two com-

ponents of a single entity.43 Whether or not ter Borch

worked hand-in-hand with Daniels on the commission

will probably never be known. But the painter certainly

knew the frame-maker's work elsewhere in the town

hall. This included, of course, the three frames that ter

Borch represented illusionistically as hanging on the

back wall of the council chamber. These frames within the portrait's actual frame comprised the room's only decoration. Their glittering surfaces, points of light glowing in the dim background, showed ter Borch's ad-

miration for Daniels's artistry. Knowing the sculptor's

other civic commissions, ter Borch likely welcomed his approach to framing The town council of Deventer. Da- niels interwove emblematic and other symbolic motifs

in a language quite unlike ter Borch's, but one that spoke

in concert with the stately portrait to present a unified

message.

We can assume that all of the symbols were commonly known and easily decipherable.44 The prominent, ra-

diant eye crowning the frame denoted the Eye of Jus-

39 D. Liebs, Lateinische Rechtsregeln und Rechssprichwdrter, Mu- nich I982, p. 32. My thanks to Hans Luijten for this reference.

40 Dumbar, op. cit. (note io), pp. 63-67.

41 Ibid., p. 20, quoting Sylvanus, op. cit. (note I5), p. 14. 42 Kettering, op. cit. (note 37).

43 P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops, Framing in the Golden Age: picture and frame in seventeenth-century Holland, Amsterdam & Zwolle I995, p. 27.

44 Ibid., p. 274. Van Thiel gives a full description of the symbols and their likely meanings.



tice; the wings, quick reward and punishment; the

measuring sticks, reasonableness; the cornucopias, af-

fluence. Such biological motifs as the oak leaves were as-

sociated with justice and civic virtue, the flowers and

fruits with plenty, the snakes with circumspection and

welfare. More graphic were the instruments of punish-

ment, such as the naturalistically carved scourge, mana-

cle, sword, thumbscrew, collar, handcuffs and padlock.

Collectively, these symbols connoted the values and re-

sponsibilities of the council.

Hanging in the chamber of the Gezworen Gemeente

chamber rather than in the council's, the portrait and its

elaborate frame reached a sizable audience, most partic-

ularly the 48 representatives from the city's eight wards

who regularly met in that room.45 This placement

underscored the close social and political linkage be-

tween the two civic entities. However, the constant

presence of a group portrait of the town council in the

Gemeente's chamber may also have served as a remind-

er of the ever-expanding authority of that body over the

48 Gemeensmannen. For it was in just this period that

the Gezworen Gemeente began to lose much of its earlier

independence, as the increasingly exclusive council

gathered powers unto itself. It is tempting to imagine

that this highly unusual group portrait of a municipal

council, a subject almost unique in Dutch art, was com-

missioned as a tangible expression of this particular

council's power, a power that ter Borch would have felt personally in his role as Gemeensman.46

The painting's formal articulation of the council's ideology-with its solemnity, old-fashioned hierati-

cism, near-archaizing removal from the everyday, and time-worn symbolism in the frame-met with a positive

response from the burgomasters. This we may assume

from the prominent hanging of the portrait, and from

the very visible position that the work has retained in

Deventer town hall to this day. The portrait claimed a

truth beyond appearances. Ignoring any hint of eco-

nomic decline or political dissension, ter Borch gave the

burgomasters the image of themselves that they most

wished to see: conservative, in full continuity with their

past, while exhibiting the perseverance and solidarity

required for good government in the present.

PORTRAITS FOR INDIVIDUALS: THE DEVENTER TYPE

Three of the regents included in The town council of De-

venter commissioned individual portraits from ter

Borch: Hendrik Nilant, Jan van Duren (fig. i) and Cor-

nelis Vos.47 These independent portraits seem to step

right out of the Town council, in the sense that they sug-

gest common sittings during the preparatory stages for

both. It is possible that other members of the council

also commissioned portraits that are now lost. More im-

portantly for our purposes, many of the extant single-

figure portraits share the pictorial language of the Town

council. I would like to return to these portraits now,

particularly to the whole-length portraits, with the ob-

jective of exploring more fully the pictorial means by

which ter Borch positioned his sitters (and himself)

within the citizen elite of Deventer.

The Portrait of San van Duren (I613-87; fig. i), ca.

I667, mentioned above, illustrates especially well the

sobriety and formality of presentation-in terms of

body language and contour, dress and setting-that characterized ter Borch's portraits for this community.

So does the very similar Portrait of Willem Marienburgh

45 Koch, op. cit. (note I3), p. 9, and A.C.F. Koch, "The Reforma- tion at Deventer in 1 579-I 580: size and social structure of the Catholic section of the population during the religious peace," Acta Historiae Neerlandicae 6 (1973), pp. 36-37. The Gezworen Gemeente was a supervisory and advisory body that in theory gave permission to the council on decisions over civic property, capital outlay and changes in the civic legal code. The council, however, heeded its recommenda- tions increasingly infrequently during the later seventeenth and throughout the eighteenth centuries. The Gezworen Gemeente did, however, hold enough power to help undermine the newly formed council that Willem iII ordered in I 674.

46 I know of only one other portrait of a town council, and that is G.J. Sibilla, The town council of Weesp (Weesp, Gemeentemuseum); see W. Sumowski, Gemdlde der Rembrandt-Schiiler, 6 vols., Landau/Pfalz, i983-[94], vol. 6, nr. 2439. My thanks to Ariane van Suchtelen for this reference.

47 Portrait of]an van Duren (Gudl. 201), New York, Metropolitan

Museum of Art, Lehman Collection, member of the town council, i644-72, paired with his wife Portrait of Margaretha van Haexbergen (Gudl. 202); Portrait of Willem Marienburgh (Gudl. 254), Prague, Na- rodni Galerie, ca. i662-64; paired with his wife (Gudl. 255). For the latter two see European old masters: Sternberk Palace, ed. G. Fage, Paris (Reunion des Musees Nationaux) I993, cat. nr. 69, with commentary on the restoration of the portraits in I967-69 to their original state. Ap- parently in the mid-i67os, ter Borch (or an assistant) was asked to alter certain fashion details to bring the dress up to date: Willem's hat was placed on the table, his collar changed, and his shoes altered from squared-off to pointed. Gertruid's collar was also changed (kind com- munication of Anja K. Sevcik, Curator, Old Masters Collection. Ter Borch painted Marienburgh's parents in the mid-i66os, probably at the same time (Gudl. 203 and 204). Vos chose a half-length format for his portrait (Portrait of Cornelis Vos, Gudl. I98), now Manchester, City Art Gallery, in contrast to the other two.


ALISON MCNEIL KETTERING

(I634-171 1; fig. 3), of ca. I663-4. Younger by a generation than van Duren, Marienburgh served on the town

council beginning in I675.

Despite the small size of each figure in relation to the

picture surface and the bareness and spaciousness of the

setting, van Duren and Marienburgh hold their own.

Heads straight and high, they stand sturdily with their

bodies positioned at a slight angle to the viewer. One hand lies across the sitter's mid-section or is hidden, while the other holds a glove. Their attire is costly yet restrained. The cape of the younger man arcs out at one

side, but otherwise his portrait resembles that of the eld-

er. Both of their capes wrap the outlines of their figures, muffling the effect of the flaring breeches almost cer-

tainly worn beneath. Even a sitter as young as Aelbert Nilant, around I6 at the time ter Borch portrayed him, chose to take little advantage of the license often allowed

youth in portraits by other Dutch painters.48 Nilant's silhouette is enclosed, his comportment restrained, and the embellishment of his attire minimal.

The portraits of van Duren and Marienburgh (like many of the other masculine images under considera-

tion), hung as pendants to portraits of their wives, a con-

ventional pairing that complicated the language of portrayal by overlaying the male's identity as regent with his identity as husband (figs. 1-4). In fact, the Marien- burgh pair was probably commissioned to commem- orate the sitters' recent marriage.49 The details of the women's clothing accorded well with the garb of their

spouses, in that they were restrained, though described with ter Borch's characteristic care. Geertruid Marien- burgh (fig. 4), probably younger than Margaretha van Haexbergen (van Duren; I614-76; fig. 2) by at least a generation, chose to wear the dress appropriate to her age. But even this more fashionable attire was presented understatedly, or "eerbaer" (honorably), as the historian Dumbar would have expressed it. Likewise, Geertruid's body language was little differentiated either from Mar- gareta's or from that of almost all the other Deventer la-

dies. As in the accompanying portraits of their hus- bands, the furnishings were limited. The wives were provided with an armchair, the men with a table, both

conventional choices for each gender.50 The matching wine-colored velvet of the furniture contributed the only color accent in an otherwise muted palette. The

furniture connected husband with wife, while establish- ing their setting as vaguely domestic, a suitable choice for paintings bound for a semi-public position within a private residence. At the same time, the glowing red of the discretely plush furniture and its positioning in the otherwise empty pictorial space contributed to the for-

mality, even regality, of the images.

Ter Borch's general approach here was repeated in

work after work, for house after house. Subtle changes do occur over the years, such as the addition of a few

more domestic accessories beginning in the late i66os.

Yet anyone with the opportunity to view the range of works sequentially would notice the repetition of specific compositional elements-body language, setting, dress, hair style-a formula individualized only by each particular sitter's head.51 One can conclude that the portraits were designed to reveal a collective elite identity for sitters whose status within the group (as in The town council of Deventer) mattered nearly as much as their own individuality.

Keeping this in mind, ter Borch's own self-portrait

(fig. 5), dating from the years during which he was appointed Gemeensman and then granted full citizenship, can be understood as making a claim for membership within this same Deventer elite. Originally it was larger all round and paired with a portrait of his wife, now lost.52 One of the few standing self-portraits executed by any seventeenth-century Dutch artist, the work shows ter Borch as composed, aloof and expressionless. His body language differs from that given his Deventer sitters mainly in the way he has used the cloak to shroud the principle features of his form and dress. The plain- ness of the resulting shape compensates for various ex-

48 Gudl. 176, whereabouts unknown, art market 1973. Compare, by contrast, the sartorial splendor chosen for the Portrait ofJGerbrand Pan- cras, a 12-year-old Amsterdam regent youth (fig. I 6).

49 The couple married on 7 May I66I, thus a few years prior to the likely date of the original portraits, I 663-64.

So Seenote 21.

51 See Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note i), vol. i, p. 138, vol. 2, cat. nrs. 159 and i6o, and I74 and 179, for highly similar presentations of the body. In later years, ter Borch's student, Caspar Netscher, developed

further the practice of inserting heads onto standard bodies. See A. Blankert, "Invul-portretten door Caspar en Constantyn Netscher," Oud Holland 8T (I966), pp. 263-69. See also E. de Jongh, exhib. cat.

Portretten van echt en trouw: huwel4jk en gezin in de Nederlandse kanst van de zeventiende eeuw, Haarlem (Frans Halsmuseum) & Zwolle I986, p. 21.

52 See Gudl. 232; the self-portrait was paired with Gudl. c I 5, 74 x 49.5 cm.



pressions of fashion he has allowed himself-the luxuri-

ant wig on his head, the elaborately worked Venetian

lace collar for his neck (in contrast to the unadorned one

of the burgomasters), and the exuberant cluster of rib-

bons for his stylishly pointed shoes.53 Apart from these

fashion flourishes, his image shares the formality, reti-

cence and representational scheme-spatial composi-

tion, lighting, posture, format, size-by which he char-

acterized other sitters from this closed community. The

simplicity of his pictorial language positioned ter Borch

as a civic figure with cosmopolitan connections rather

than as an artist making a professional claim.

PORTRAIT DECORUM AND MASCULINE SARTORIAL DIS-

PLAY In the seventeenth century, when every gentle-

man was a public man, "uytwendige pracht en prael"

("gaudy and decorated display") inevitably prompted a

response. Among the satirists aiming a pen at extrava-

gantly dressed gentlemen was ter Borch's own aged father, who lived in nearby Zwolle. Ter Borch Sr valued

the inward man, his character and his accomplishments,

not outward show. One of his poems mocks the manners

and dress of the local elite, and concludes: "True nobil-

ity is marked by wisdom and manly works."154 During much of the century, Calvinist and Puritan theologians

fulminated against sartorial extravagance.55 As late as I673, one Dutch preacher's diatribe against indecorous

fashion specifically included tall "pyramid" hats and wide breeches, "hanging limply like women's skirts."56 Theologians and secular satirists alike contrasted such

perceived excesses with an ideal of gentlemanly deco-

rum that valued proportion, modesty, dignity and, abo-

ve all, moderation. For a different set of reasons, the

writers of contemporary conduct books joined the cho-

rus, advising against all excess and extravagance, while

commending dignity, self-control and civility. In I657,

the Dutch painter and theorist Samuel van Hoogstraten

produced a free translation of a contemporary French

conduct book, Den eerlykenjongeling, which he subtitled "The noble art of making oneself honored and esteemed

by one and all."57 Van Hoogstraten recommended that

men present themselves in attire that was discretely ele-

gant, yet nonchalant in overall effect. Over-embellish-

ment and affectation were to be avoided, for they indi-

cated an unseemly effort at creating a fashionable image.

Again the watchword was moderation.58 The sort of gentleman of whom the conduct books

approved appears everywhere in Dutch art. Contempo-

rary genre prints and painted cityscapes show countless

depictions of the wealthy and powerful controllers of

Holland's economic and political wellbeing. In public settings--imagine representations of the Dam, the Stock

Exchange, the churches of Amsterdam--well-dressed

gentlemen are shown full-length and striking in their

contours. They wear their finery lightly, for any flaunt- ing would have rendered them "uytwendigh," upsetting

the image of an orderly, civilized society that such paint-

ings sought to convey. In portraiture, the same quiet el-

egance and moderation prevail, and nowhere more than in Deventer under the brush of Gerard ter Borch. Here,

53 Originally, his head may have been covered with a hat. If so, he must have removed it after ca. I670 and perhaps added mass to the hair. It is also possible that he began the portrait with a simpler collar. My thanks to Irene Groeneweg and Ariane van Suchtelen for discussing these costume details with me.

54 Kettering, op. cit. (note 9), vol. 2, Appendix 2, 5, and Kettering, op. cit. (note 25), p. 41, and note i. The poem, probably written some- time in the I640s, was addressed to "Aedel" (nobility), and indeed be-

cause of the greater number of nobility in Overijssel than in the western provinces (except The Hague), they offered manifold targets for Ge- rard Sr. But his attack was probably generalized to include regents as well.

55 For example, in Deventer in I643, religious authorities singled out long hair on men as epitomizing all those new customs and strange fashions contrary to correct conduct in life. See Koch, op. cit. (note I3), p. 14, note 30, where he refers to the archives of the classis of the Nieuwe Hervormde Kerk, Deventer, I642 and i 643. See also Ketter- ing, op. cit. (note 25), pp. 45-46.

56 Theologische en politycke bedenckingen over den bedroefden toestant der Vereenigde Nederlanden; voorgestelt tot verbeteringe soo van alle een

yegelijcks sondige leven, als van eenige notoire gebreken in den staat onses vaderlandts, by S.H. V.D., Th. en Ph. Doctor, Amsterdam, I673, tran-

scribed in De Oude Tijd 5 (I873), pp. 86-89: "...gelyck oock niet lange geleden met haer lange en wijde Broecken, zijnde onder veel wijder als boven, en hangende flodderen als vrouwen rocken tot midden voor de schenen" (p. 88). My thanks to Irene Groeneweg for this reference.

57 Den eerlykenjongeling, of de edele konst van zich by groote en kleyne

te doen eeren en bemninnen, Dordrecht I657, a translation and reworking of Nicolas Faret, L'Honn&te Homme ou l'art de plaire.a la cour, Paris I630. On van Hoogstraten's translation and reworking, see C. Brusati, Artifice and illusion: the art and writing of Samuel van Hoogstraten, Chi- cago & London 1995, pp. 53-54, 156-57. On Faret, see Domna Stan- ton, The aristocrat as art, New York I980, esp. pp. 20ff. On courtesy books, see H. Roodenburg, "How to sit, stand, and walk: toward a historical anthropology of Dutch paintings and prints," in W. Franits (ed.), Looking at seventeenth-century Dutch art: realism reconsidered, Cambridge 1997, ch. 13.

58 See Brusati, op. cit. (note 57), pp. 17 and 97-99, in van Hoogstra- ten's translation of Den eerlykenjongeling.


6o ALISON MCNEIL KETTERING

of course, the emphasis was rather more on moderation

than on elegance.

The full-length, standing portraits discussed thus

far, exemplifying the dominant type among ter Borch's

portraits, suggest an intolerance of sartorial adornment

among his Deventer clientele that even exceeded the na-

tional norm. But in addition to ter Borch's own excep-

tional self-image, several of his commissioned works

show unexpected variations on this typical, conservative

pattern. In these portraits ter Borch collaborated with

his sitters to expand the limits of self-representation, at

least in terms of dress. The canvases I have in mind in-

clude his frequently reproduced Portrait of a young man

of ca. I 662-63 (fig. 8), the lesser-known Portrait of Gose- wyn Hogers, Professor at the Deventer Athenaeum, (fig.

12), ca. I664-65, and the Portrait of a gentleman in gray of ca. I665-66 (fig. I0).59

In each instance, ter Borch also produced a pendant

portraying the sitter's wife (figs. 9, I1, 13). In only one

of the three pairs--the Cleveland pendant to the London

Young man-does the wife's sartorial splendor seem to

match her husband's (fig. 9).60 She wears a stunning gown of shimmering silver and black silk and satin, with

an extravagant fall of tightly curled ribbons down the

center of her bodice, the most luxurious female attire

ever depicted by ter Borch. Each of the other two pen-

dants conforms to the far more sober pattern preferred

by nearly all the female sitters of Deventer. As was cus-

tomary in the seventeenth century, the "clothes-horse"

of most couples was decidedly the male.

The Portrait of a young man (fig. 8) is unusual among the Deventer portraits for the complexity of the figure's

silhouette. The gentleman's tall hat complements his

loose, blousey shirt, wide petticoat breeches, flaring

frills at the knees (canons), and beribboned, shiny,

squared-off shoes. As abstract pictorial masses, these

garments coordinate into a balanced and striking pat-

tern of echoing diamonds and angles. The whole ensem-

ble is decisively closed at the bottom with one foot set

directly forward on axis, the other behind and almost

perpendicular to it (mirroring his feather-decorated

hat). The costume itself does the gesturing here, rather

than the small, boneless white hand that hangs limply

against the body. Even the face, white and expression-

less, seems less vigorous than the emphatic hat and elab-

orate collar that surround it.

The Portrait ofa man in gra)y (fig. i o) presents an even more flamboyant image. There is not a stick of furniture

to distract us from the man's clothing. His cape has been

removed to one arm, as if to make certain that no detail of sleeve, or glove, or petticoat breeches will be missed, and his feet are set widely apart to show off a pair of ex-

quisitely embellished shoes. The attire arrests our atten-

tion not by its geometries but by its interplay of colors

and textures. Instead of the usual blacks, the ensemble is

dominated by a warm, gray-brown ("Fiel Mort"), re-

lieved by cream-colored accessories spiked with traces

of pink, blue and yellow-the multitudinous ribbons

encircling his waist and decorating his sleeves, gloves,

breeches, kneebands and shoes.6i Again, the clothing is the most active element of the portrait, whereas the

body inside it appears rather inert.

The figure of Gosewyn Hogers (fig. 12), by contrast,

forms a livelier, staccato silhouette. Cocking his arm

akimbo, he strikes an attitude of elegant though conven-

tionally masculine assertiveness. While his garb is once

again enlivened by a profusion of ribbons (this time in

black and white), we have the impression of an individu-

al human being actually wearing splendid clothes, rather than of a mannikin modeling them. This impression

is enhanced by his unusually rich surroundings. Book-

shelves, writing implements, reading stand and books

themselves combine to suggest that the sitter had more

on his mind than what he wore on his body.62

59 Gudl. I93 (paired with I94, London, National Gallery, and Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art), I95 (paired with I96, both Great Britain, private collection), I99 (paired with 200, both Great Britain, private collection).

6o Portrait ofta lady (Gudl. 194). 6i I. Groeneweg "Court and city: dress in the age of Frederik Hen-

drik and Amalia," in exhib. cat., Princely display: the court of Frederik Hendrik of Orange and Amalia van Solms, The Hague (Historical Mu- seum) 1997, p. 208, discusses the substitution of "feuillemorte" for black that Richard Fanshawe, English ambassador to Spain, chose for

the attire he wore for his entry into Madrid in i 664. Gesina ter Borch used the spelling "Fiel Mort" ("feuillemorte") in the list of colors she inserted into her poetry album; see Kettering, op. cit. (note 9), p. 534, fol. 39.

62 The showy effect of Hogers's attire is created primarily by his shiny white stockings and by the display of black ribbons at his sleeves, and white and black ribbons at his breeches, garters and shoes; in contrast to the other two, he pulls his cape around one side of his body. Ter Borch's attention to detail is such that the embroidered design on the organdy sleeves is quite evident. Hogers has a small blond moustache.


Gerard ter Borch's portraits for the Deventer elite 6i

I2 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of Gosewyn Hogers, ca. I664-65. 13 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of Freda Quadacker, ca. I664-65. Great Britain, private collection Great Britain, private collection

As it happens, Hogers is the only one of these three

gentlemen to have been identified. More is known about

him than about any of ter Borch's other sitters except

Gisbert Cuper (fig. 20), who succeeded Hogers as Pro-

fessor of History and Rhetoric at the Athenaeum (i66i-

68). Midway through his academic career Hogers was

appointed to the Gezworen Gemeente and in i668 ele-

vated to the town council. At this point in i668, Hogers

retired from the academy to devote himself fully to his

council duties.63 He served as burgomaster until I674- when Willem in dismissed him along with all the other

anti-Orange burgomasters-and died two years later.

The style of clothing worn by Hogers in the portrait

suggests that he sat for ter Borch around I664-65, at

about the midpoint of his professorship. The library be-

hind him and the open folio on his reading stand would

thus appear to be perfectly appropriate signs of his

scholarly occupation, and in fact conform to a contem-

porary iconographical type, the portrait of the scholar in

his study.64 But the adherence to this portrait type with

its painted attributes, even more than his fashionable at-

tire, makes the work highly unusual among ter Borch's

Deventer portraits. We have seen that the norm for ac-

cessories ranged from a totally bare room to, at most, a

table and a chair. Remarkably, we see here not only

many more objects, but also objects that convey specific

information about Hogers. If the visual result is not

altogether harmonious, it certainly succeeds in commu-

63 Houck, op. cit. (note 7), p. 44I; J.C. van Slee, De Illustre School te Deventer, I630-I878: hare geschiedenis, hoogleeraren en studenten, met

biyvoeging van het Album Studiosorum, The Hague I9I6, pp. 126-27. See, also, A. Staring, De Hollanders thuis: gezelschapstukken uit drie

eeuwen, The Hague I956, p. 94.

64 Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note I), vol. I, p. 140, vol. 2, p. I9I. Gud-

laugsson assumed that the setting was not included in the original ver-

sion of the portrait, but added between i674 and Hogers's early death

in I676. This he based on the notion that ter Borch only first intro-

duced settings into his portraits in the late i 66os (whether the settings

were associated with the scholar's studio or not). While generally true,

there is at least one portrait with a setting that dates from I 663-64, the

Portrait of a merchant (?) (Gudl. 224; London, Mansion House, Samu- els Collection). Gudlaugsson dated it I668-69 because of this very of-

fice setting but it should be redated I 663-64 because of the hat held by

the sitter, the high crown of which went out of fashion thereafter. See

note 9. My thanks to Irene Groeneweg for the observation that allowed

the new dating.



nicating a good deal more than the sitter's age, elite status

and fashion sense. The most prominent book in his

library, for example, rests on the stand, a folio boldly la-

beled "Lipsi Opera" along the top, the collected writ-

ings ofJustus Lipsius. 6 Rather than signaling a personal adherence to Lipsius's neo-Stoic philosophy, it prob-

ably conveyed instead Hogers's affiliation with the Latin

historical and literary scholarship undertaken by his

eminent predecessors (and teachers) at the Athenaeum,

J.F. Gronovius and J.G. Graevius. Just as these profes-

sors had positioned themselves in a direct line of succes-

sion from Lipsius, so, too, did Hogers, both in his own

scholarship and in his painted self-presentation.66

On 5 March I663, not long before he sat for ter Borch, Hogers married Freda Quadacker, a member of an old Deventer family, who probably brought in-

creased financial security to the marriage. In a pendant

to Hogers's portrait, ter Borch depicted her with the

hallmark of female members of the Deventer regent

class (fig. I3). One year after the marriage, the couple

moved into an impressive new house on Polstraat de-

signed by (or in the manner of) Philips Vingboons, an

Amsterdam architect with a Republic-wide reputa-

tion.67 With its classicizing stateliness, broad expanse of facade and colossal-order pilasters, Hogers's house dif-

fered strikingly from its neighbors, except (tellingly) for

the section of the town hall nearly across the street,

which Vingboons had designed in I662.

As one contemporary poet compared the precious-

ness of an urban town house with its owner's finest suit

of clothes, Hogers might well have linked his own luxu-

rious house with the portrait's representation of his

"beste pack" (best suit).68 It is attractive to think of the

portrait pair hanging in the semi-public space of a front

room. Both the house and the pictures were purchased

at a time when Hogers was experiencing personal and

professional success. Perhaps the jaunty pose and the

ribbon decoration of his portrait are an understandable

bit of swagger, nicely counterbalanced by those signs of

scholarly dedication.

The Hogers portrait is not alone, however, in striking a balance between modesty and prodigality, simplicity and extravagance.69 In all three of the male portraits under discussion here, the showy dress remains but one

element within ter Borch's representational scheme.

Body language--even that of Hogers-is understated,

settings range from formal to minimal, and the palette of

colors is generally quite sober. Even in the highly "icoloristic" Gentleman in gray (fig. io), soft browns and grays predominate. The small scale alone exerted a

measure of control, making the images appear miniatur-

ist and precious rather than grand and imposing. If these

sitters chose to have themselves portrayed in attire

rather more extravagant than the Deventer norm, they

nevertheless chose a portraitist whose entire approach

was guaranteed to control excess, and thus to maintain

the aesthetic and moral order.

65 Not unexpectedly, the folio ter Borch represented is fictitious, as

none of the extant editions of Lipsius's collected works resembles it.

66 Lipsius, Gronovius and Graevius were so closely linked that

Elector Frederick II's tutor grouped them together in his diatribe

against the influence of Neo-Latin on the German language. See G.

Oestreich, Neostoicism and the early modern state, Cambridge I982, p. 128. The German-born J.F. Gronovius, who served as Professor of

Rhetoric and History at the Athenaeum between I642-58, was the first

Athenaeum professor to be appointed to the Deventer Gezworen Ge-

meente, a position that gave him considerable satisfaction, according to

one of his letters; see van Slee, op. cit. (note 63), p. 124. J.G. Graevius, Gronovius's successor (likewise German-born), who served between

I658-6i, did not stay in his academic post long enough for such an ap- pointment. Hogers, however, a member of a prominent Deventer family, was well-positioned to follow in Gronovius's footsteps. For Grono-

vius's scholarly work on Tacitus's writings, see S. Bugter, Gronovzis en de Annales van Tacitus, Heeswijk-Dinther I980. As for Hogers's own publications, they included a book of Latin poetry, several lectures on

political history, and an essay on freedom dedicated to the Deventer

town council, which acknowledges his learned friend Raebolt Heerman

Schele. Hogers also published several posthumous editions of writings by Schele. Though a member of the Overijssel nobility, Schele ex-

pressed a strongly partisan pro-States political viewpoint in some of his writings, while other writings grew out of his study of ancient Latin history; see S.J. Fockema Andreae, "Raebolt Heerman Schele, I620- I662," in de Vries, op. cit. (note i6), pp. 59-77. My thanks to Andrea Gasten for her help in checking the publications of Hogers and Schele.

67 See E.H. ter Kuile, Zuid-Salland, vol. 4 of Deprovincie Overi/ssel: de Nederlandse monumenten van geschiedenis en kunst, The Hague I964,

fig. 244. Vingboons was already working in Deventer two years earlier, when he designed a new wing for the town hall; ibid, p. 5. Dubbe, op. cit. (note 33), p. 378 suggests that the sandstone festoons on the front of this house might have been made by Derck Daniels.

68 See K. Ottenheym, Philips Vingboons (i607-i678): architect, Zutphen I989, p. I73 (unsourced): "Ziet wat een fraey kasteel! Wat heit het me gecost!/ Myn gelt is nvet verbrast aen keur van vremde cost!/... Myn huys is myn sieraet, myn huys myn beste pack,/ daer voor is myn tresoor, daer voor myn koffer open,/ en wat myn huys be- hoeft, dat haest ick my te koopen!"

69 For intelligent observations on concepts of moderation relevant to the English court see D. Kuchta, "The semiotics of masculinity in Renaissance England," in J. Turner (ed.), Sexuality and gender in early modern Europe, Cambridge 1993, p. 239.



THE FRAMES Our understanding of the sober, "norma-

tive" Deventer portraits is complicated by the opulence

of their frames. Until very recently, reference to frames

has been entirely absent from most examinations of por-

traiture.7" In this essay, attention has already been called

to the significant aesthetic and iconographical contribu-

tion made by Derck Daniels's impressive frame for The

town council of Deventer (fig. 6). Now, in regard to the

single-figure portraits, the simplicity of their pictorial

rhetoric again needs to be discussed in relation to the

showiness of frames almost certainly produced by the

same craftsman.

The selection of an appropriate frame involved sitter,

painter and frame-maker. Criteria extended well be-

yond the relationship to the portrait, for a frame also had

to accord with a home's existing decorative scheme and,

not least, had to satisfy its owners' sense of their own

worth.7' Many earlier seventeenth-century Dutch por-

traits were surrounded by an ebony cabinetmaker's

frame. Such a frame, constructed of a rare type of wood

but featuring simple horizontal and vertical lines, was

both costly and tastefully modest. The preacher Eleazer

Lootius and his wife, who sat for ter Borch before his

move to Deventer, chose this type of frame, or rather,

one giving the appearance of ebony.72

Nevertheless, a number of ter Borch's Deventer sit-

ters, presumably in consultation with the painter, seem

to have chosen elaborately carved, gilt frames by Deven-

ter's own master sculptor and craftsman, Derck Da-

niels. His presence in their midst must have made the

choice of this frame-maker (and therefore of his style) as

appealing for these individual sitters as it was for the

town council. It is worth noting that in nearby Zwolle

the elite also patronized the local frame-maker, Her-

mannus van Arnhem, whose similarly ornate work

featured luxuriantly trailing vines and floral festoons.73

Daniels's frames can be classed as a variation on the

composite, auricular frame style that flourished from

the mid-seventeenth century onward.74 The style devel-

oped out of a Mannerist metal smith tradition that fa-

vored curving lines and organic shapes. It became espe-

cially popular with sitters in the province of Holland

who had chosen to be portrayed in the newly fashion-

able "van Dyckian" mode developed by Maes, Netscher

and van Musscher. The fluid elements of these frames

harmonized well with the graceful curves of the sitters'

drapery and hair. Such frames not only complemented

the increasingly luxurious decoration of the domestic

interiors in which they were displayed, but their wide,

gilt borders also helped to set the pictures off from the

dark paneling or fashionable, gilt leather wall-covering

against which they hung.

While the style of ter Borch's Deventer portraits

could not have differed more strongly from the van

Dyckian mode, it is quite possible that the interior deco-

ration of his patron's homes accorded with the taste in

Holland. We may extrapolate from the sandstone swags

and garlands decorating the exterior of Hogers's house,

probably executed by Derck Daniels, that Hogers might

well have commissioned Daniels to make gilt frames in

the auricular style for the portraits of his wife and him-

self (figs. I2-I 3). Moreover, the frames that ter Borch il-

lusionistically inserted as wall decoration in his genre

pictures are, without exception, gilt and elaborate.

Four of the original frames for ter Borch's later por-

traits have survived, two of which surrounded the mini-

ature busts of Moses ter Borch and Gisbert Cuper (fig.

20). The wide frames transformed these two miniatures

into paintings of a scale appropriate for hanging on walls.

The other two original frames belonged to the full-

length portraits of Willem and Geertruid Marienburgh,

discussed above. Three of the four (all but the one for

7o The exhibition catalogue by van Thiel and de Bruyn Kops, op. cit. (note 43) was groundbreaking in this respect when it was originally

published in Dutch in I984: P.J.J. van Thiel and C.J. de Bruyn Kops,

Pryst de lijst: de Hollandse schilderiylijst in de I7de eeuw, Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) I984. See also P. Mitchell and L. Roberts, Frameworks:

form, function and ornament in European portraitframes, London I 996. 71 Mitchell and Roberts, op. cit. (note 70), pp. 96-97.

72 For illustrations of the portraits, see Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note

I), vol. 2, cat. nrs. 44-45, and more recently, Kettering, op. cit. (note 37), figs. 25-26. Unfortunately, neither publication includes the fra-

mes. My thanks to Michiel Jonker and Carol Pottasch for examining

the Lootius frames which, they report, may or may not be original.

73 J. Verbeek, "De houtsnijder Hermannus van Arnhem," Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum i6 (I968), pp. 24-36. Dubbe, op. cit. (note 33), p. 362, mentions Daniels working in Zwolle as well. Van Arnhem's original teacher was likely Derck Daniels's older brotherJacob, and he work-

ed in a manner similar to that of Derck Daniels throughout his life. 74 Composite frames combining auricular carving with festoons

were widespread in i66os; see van Thiel and de Bruin Kops, op. cit. (note 70), p. 3 I I.



Moses) have been convincingly attributed to Daniels.75

Evidence that similar frames originally surrounded

many of ter Borch's other full-length portraits comes

from an odd source-a pastiche by an eighteenth or ni-

neteenth-century copyist depicting Aelbert Nilant and

his mother-in-law Johanna Quadacker (both copied

from ter Borch portraits). Hanging on the wall behind

the pair are two of ter Borch's other portraits, both in

heavily carved, gilt frames. Those two portray Herman-

nus Quadacker, Johanna's brother, and Frederik Bannier,

her husband.76 Their frames resemble Daniels's work

for the Marienburgh pair (figs. 3-4), similarly including

nude human figures to support the sitters' coats of arms,

as well as vigorous auricular carving and undulating fes-

toons of fruits and flowers. In the lower corners of the

frames in the pastiche are cornucopias.

In the actual, extant frames for the Marienburgh pair,

naturalistically carved sunflowers, roses, grapevines and

leaves intertwine with undulating, abstract forms, and

even bulge out exuberantly at the sides. It is likely that

these vegetal forms carried recognizable meanings ap-

propriate to framing pictures that might well have been

commissioned as marriage portraits. Flowers, grapes

and cornucopias, for example, probably alluded in a

generalized way to the couple's desire for virtue, fertility

and prosperity. Sunflowers were associated with love

and vines with marriage. The putto at the top left of

each frame holds the trailing festoon, while the one at

the top right reads aloud from a sheet of poetry praising

the Marienburgh name.77 Thus, in terms of their sym-

bolic content, the frames enhanced or expanded upon

the meanings of the portraits within.

The opulence of these frames does find an echo in

various details within the Marienburgh paintings-the

gold braid of the furniture, for example, and Geer- truid's gold-embroidered, gleaming satin underskirt.

Similar frames would have found more points of con-

nection with elements in the few showier Deventer por-

traits, such as the Portrait of Gosewipn Hogers (fig. I2) or

the Portrait of a gentleman in gray (fig. io). But in con-

trast to the van Dyckian style mentioned above, ter

Borch's typically understated pictorial rhetoric makes a

striking contrast with the frames. Similarly, his neutral

tones and mat surfaces are no match for the high value

and shine of the gilt.

The frames' considerable width in relation to the to-

tal picture surface, their high relief, manipulation of light and shade, and finished surface detail, all combine

to command the viewer's close attention. The painted

figures within, the most defined of the few forms inside

the pictorial space, compete with the sculpturally insis-

tent, emphatically naturalistic forms of the carving. The

recumbent poses and playful gestures of the carved put-

ti make the postures of the painted figures appear all the

more upright and formal, just as the size of the carved

decoration in relation to the sitters makes the latter seem

even more miniaturist and precious. Far from reinfor-

cing an illusion of pictorial depth and believability, these

frames call attention to the artificiality of that illusionis-

tic world.

Simultaneously, they help to idealize it. And this, I

believe, is the key to their function. While the artist was

at pains to render a satisfying likeness of his sitters,

describing their facial features and attire with exacting

detail,verisimilitude would have been only one of his

objectives. Another goal, equally important for his pa-

trons, was to celebrate through portraiture their status

as members of the ruling elite. We have already dis-

cussed how the choice of the full-length format lent an

aura of stateliness and mastery to the figures portrayed,

despite the relatively modest size of these paintings. But

the frames, combining with the preciousness of ter

Borch's pictorial style, added a special dimension to the

matter of scale. Perhaps these images are not so much

controlled and checked by their modest size, as made

more precious by it. These elaborate frames, like so

many ornate jewelboxes, do not encroach upon the ob-

jects within, but rather pay homage to them.

75 Ibid., cat. nr. 70. For Cuper, see cat. nr. 73 (Gudl. 268): an auric-

ular cartouche with fruits and flowers, the arms of Deventer and his

motto (misspelled). The Portrait of Moses ter Borch (Gudl. 173; Neth-

erlands, VdS Collection, head dated ca. I662) was probably provided

with its frame ca. I667, the year of Moses's death, around which time

Gesina (probably) made additions to the painting. The frame-maker was not Daniels.

76 See Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note I), vol. 2, pI. XIX, fig. I. The pic-

ture combined four single-figure portraits into one: Aelbert Nilant

(Gudl. I76) and Johanna Quadacker (Gudl. I75) in the front, and Frederick Fredericks Bannier (Gudl. 174) and Hermannus Quadacker (Gudl. 253) on the wall.

77 My thanks to Hans Luijten for this interpretation, based on em-

blems and other designs, such as garden sculpture. It is a more probable identification of the putto's actions than singing, as suggested by van Thiel and de Bruin Kops, op. cit. (note 70), p. 300.


Gerard ter Borch's portraits for the Deventer elite

14 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofFranfois de Vicq (i646-I707), I670. 15 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofAletta Pancras (1649-I707), I670. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

CLASS PICTURES Portraiture always involves a negotia-

tion between artist and sitter. In seventeenth-century

Deventer, ter Borch and his elite patrons were particu-

larly well matched. The regents of a town with barely

any previous artistic tradition suddenly enjoyed the ser-

vices of an exceptional artist. While creating a new por-

trait type for them, ter Borch created a market for him-

self, and achieved a virtual monopoly with the one

group that could afford his services.

But this "negotiation" between ter Borch and his sit-

ters extended beyond the exchange of good money for

better portraits. The artist became hugely successful

with this audience because he created for them an image

of themselves that corresponded to-perhaps even im-

proved upon-what they wanted to see. In a time of de-

clining civic prosperity, decreased opportunities and

factional strife, he showed them to be wealthy and confi-

dent as individuals, and unified as a class.

These portraits have a formal, ceremonial quality ful-

ly appropriate to the portrayal of a ruling elite. Ter

Borch's quiet palette, spare settings and understated

rhetoric underscore the virtues of moderation and re-

straint to which that elite aspired. Figures stand erect,

frontal and full-length before the viewer, hinting less at

aristocracy than at personal dignity. Their clothing is

sophisticated and expensive, but rarely exceeds the

bounds of sober good taste. Inevitably the portraits are

paired-husband and wife shown side by side in a con-

vincing image of marital as well as social stability.

The striking formal uniformity from portrait pair to

portrait pair was no accident, and as ter Borch's many

earlier and later portraits attest, not the result of any

failure of artistic invention. Each individual sitter could

recognize his or her specific features in the portrait, but

at the same time recognize all the signs of membership

in the elite caste. Just as important, any of their fellow regents visiting their home could read the same signs

and come to the same conclusion: "How very much like

us these people are!" Seldom in seventeenth-century

Dutch painting do so many discreet images function so

explicitly as a group portrait.



i6 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofGerbrandPancras (i658-I7i6), I670. Manchester, City Art Gallery, Assheton Bennett Estate

EPILOGUE: PORTRAITS FOR AMSTERDAM REGENTS

Few outside Overijssel chose a portrait mode that combined a demeanor of such formal sobriety with the

small-scale, full-length format. Many in the western cit-

ies would probably have agreed with de Lairesse who, if

he (or they) had traveled to Deventer to see the por-

traits, might have disdained them for their unnatural-

ness, that is, for their rendering as stiff little figures.78

The Deventer mode was not for everyone. Neverthe-

less, ter Borch did earn commissions from several pow-

erful Amsterdam regents, members of the Pancras-de

Vicq and the de Graeff families, in the years just before

and during the I672-74 occupation of Deventer. But he

altered his approach in ways that, though subtle to us to-

day, must have proved significant to these patrons.

The marriage of ter Borch's half-sister Jenneken to

the Amsterdam merchant Sijbrand Schellinger in i668,

and probably, too, the death of ter Borch's wife Geer-

truid in the late i66os, provided the impetus for the ar-

tist's stays in Amsterdam. These visits subsequently

generated a clientele for portraiture. Schellinger, a dis-

tant relation of FranSois de Vicq, may well have aided

ter Borch in procuring the first of the sets of commis-

sions. The set included portraits of de Vicq (fig. I4), his

wife Aletta Pancras (fig. I5), father-in-law Nicolaes Pancras (Amsterdam burgomaster and director of the

East India Company), mother-in-law Petronella de

Waert and young brother-in-law Gerbrand Pancras (fig.

I6), all dated i 670.79 The works share the same small

scale as ter Borch's Deventer portraits. But it is hardly

surprising that the Amsterdam sitters chose the knee-

length format; it fostered a relatively greater intimacy

between sitter and viewer, not to mention a more con-

centrated attention on costume detail.8o Each of the canvases included a table but otherwise ter Borch devoted

his pictorial energy to rendering the facial features and

sartorial finery in delicate detail. This is particularly the

case with Franqois de Vicq, whose newly fashionable

78 See note 27.

79 Portrait of Franfois de Vicq (I646-1707; Gudl. 240), Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum; Portrait of Aletta Pancras (I649-1707; Gudl. 24I), Am-

sterdam, Rijksmuseum; Portrait of Nicolaes Pancras (I622-78; Gudl.

242), Hamburg, Kunsthalle, canvas, 38 X 31 cm; Portrait of Petronella

de Waert (I628-1709; Gudl. 243), Madrid, Prado, canvas, 40 x 30 cm

(Gudlaugsson considered it a good copy); Portrait of Gerbrand Pancras

(I658-I7 I6; Gudl. 239), Manchester, City Art Gallery, Assheton Ben-

nett estate. S.A.C. Dudok van Heel, "'In presentie van de Heer Gerard

ter Borgh,"' in Essays in northern European art presented to Egbert Ha-

verkamp Begemann on his sixtieth birthday, Doornspijk i983, pp. 66-67,

corrected the earlier identification of the young sitter in the latter por-

trait as Prince Hendrik Casimir ii van Nassau Dietz. J.E. Elias, De

vroedschap van Amsterdam I578-I795, 2 vols., Amsterdam i963, vol. 2,

p. cxiv, used Nicolaes Pancras as one of his primary examples of the

corruption rampant in the Amsterdam city government.

8o Aletta Pancras was related by marriage to Schellinger; see Ket-

tering, op. cit. (note 9), scrapbook, fols. 87 and 88, for Gesina ter

Borch's copies of the portraits of the women.

8i Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note I), vol. 2, p. 28.



black "justaucorps" (waistcoat), rendered appropriately

slender, befitted a young man of his rising stature. Only

24 at the time of the sitting, he had already been ap-

pointed churchwarden of the Oude Kerk (i668), dike-

reeve and sheriff (I670). As for the rendering of the 12-

year-old Gerbrand, ter Borch produced here one of the

most colorful portraits of his oeuvre, the attire domina-

ted by a light gray-blue coat richly laden with rose-colo-

red ribbons and silver decoration. Granted the license of

youth, boys of wealthy Holland families (by contrast

with Deventer) frequently displayed such finery in por-

traiture, a practice lost on an earlier generation of art

historians who mistakenly assumed that the child's fin-

ery indicated that he belonged to a branch of the House

of Orange.

By the time ter Borch produced the second group of

portraits in I673 for the de Graeff family, he was living

more or less continuously in Amsterdam-but now as

an exile. In June I672, the Deventer town council, led

by Hendrik Nilant and the anti-Orange faction, had sur-

rendered to the combined forces of Munster and Co-

logne. The minutes of the session during which the

Gezworen Gemeente consented to this decision show

that ter Borch had already departed.8' He returned to the impoverished town only after the occupying forces

withdrew in I674. During the intervening period he

must have endured considerable personal hardship as

well. In a remarkable reversal of roles, he actually agreed

to take on work as a copyist of Netscher's portraits in

Amsterdam.82

He must therefore have considered himself fortunate

to have been offered commissions by the powerful de

Graeff family in I673, again, perhaps through a family connection. 83 This time we can hardly speak of a portrait set, for the paintings show little consistency as a

group. The Portrait of Andries de Graeff and that of his son Cornelis de Graeff are reminiscent of the Pancras portraits.84 But the other two-depictions of Andries's nephews-show ter Borch's accommodation to new sets

-~~~~~~~~.

17 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait ofjacob de Graeff (I642-90), i 673. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

82 Dudok van Heel, op. cit. (note 79), pp. 68-69. 83 The son of ter Borch's brother-in-law, Isaac de Hochepied, hus-

band of his half-sister Anna ter Borch, married Pieter de Graeff's

daughter.

84 Portrait of Cornelis de Graeff, The Hague, Mauritshuis (Gudl. 262), canvas, 38.5 x 28.5 cm, Dudok van Heel, op. cit. (note 79), pp. 66-

68, established the dates of both of these paintings with the help of al-

manacs kept by Pieter de Graeff in i673-75. The Portrait ofAndries de

Graeff; England, private collection, canvas, 40.5 x 30 cm, was not known to Gudlaugsson. It was added to the comprehensive exhibition

of ter Borch's works, G. Langemeyer et al., exhib. cat., Gerard ter

Borch, Zwolle M6I7-Deventer i68i, The Hague (Mauritshuis) & Mun- ster (Landesmuseum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte) 1974, cat. nr.

s6a (some believe this attribution to be insecure). The mistaken date,

I 674, on both this and the portrait of his son Cornelis, was added later.



i8 Caspar Netscher, Portrait ofPieterde Graeff(1638-I7o7), 1663. 19 Caspar Netscher, Portrait of jacoba Bicker (1640-95), 1663. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum

of constraints. The Portrait of Pieter de Graeff; with its sitter seated in an armchair, its curtain and seascape

background, follows a formula established long before

by such Amsterdam artists as van der Helst, for the por-

trait was commissioned to harmonize with a representa-

tion of Pieter's wife Jacoba Bicker by Gerard van Zijl.8,

Likewise, ter Borch adapted the Portrait of Jacob de Graeff (fig. 17) to a preexisting panel shape (arched),

format (three-quarter-length) and representational

scheme. The panel was commissioned to complement

Caspar Netscher's depictions of Jacob's brother Pieter

de Graeff and his wife Jacoba Bicker executed ten years

before in I663 (figs. I8-I9; complicatedly, the same sit-

ters just mentioned above).86 By I673, the date of the

portrait, Jacob had established himself firmly within

Amsterdam regent circles, attaining the appointments

of alderman and captain of a civic guard company. The

image positioned him as an homme de qualite, an Amster-

85 Portrait of Pieter de Graeff(i638-17o7; Gudl. 263, whereabouts unknown), copper. Dudok van Heel, op. cit. (note 79), p. 69, found the

archival reference for the pendant (present whereabouts unknown) by

van Zijl (I609-I665), an artist otherwise known for his genre pictures.

The two paintings may possibly be the ones for which Pieter de Graeff

ordered gilt frames in I676.

86 Portrait of jacob de Graeff(i642-9o; Gudl. 265), I673, Amster- dam, Rijksmuseum, panel; Caspar Netscher, Portrait ofPieter de Graeff

and Portrait of jacoba Bicker, both I663, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, panel. These were the first portrait commissions of any importance for

the young artist, who had just returned to the Netherlands from Bor-

deaux. Since Jacob's wife had died in I667, there was no question of a

pendant for his portrait.



- iN

20 Gerard ter Borch, Portrait of Gisbert Cuper (1644-1716), ca. I675. Deventer, Museum De Waag

dam civic aristocrat conscious of the latest international

fashions, rather than as a Dutch military officer, as is often asserted. The combination of "justaucorps," loose breeches, walking stick, broad, fringed, brocaded bal- dric (sword-belt) and full wig, can be found in numer-

ous French fashion plates from the i670s.87 More spe-

cifically, it identified him as a de Graeff, member of one

of the most influential families of the city, for the setting

included a coat of arms and a rich architectural ensem-

ble, enhanced by a gracefully draped curtain, that

matched his portrait with those of his relatives. Ter

Borch followed Netscher's lead by immersing the figure

within (rather than setting him against) this unevenly il-

luminated environment.88 But the tight control of the

representational language, and especially the stern, con-

centrated power of the characterization of the sitter's

head, show both how beneficial the competition with his

former student proved yet how true to his own vision ter

Borch remained.

During the last years of his life, once he had returned

to Deventer, ter Borch continued to receive portrait

commissions. A few sitters hailed from old noble lines,

for example, the van Reede-Ginkel and van Ripperda

families, and were appropriately rendered as military

figures.89 The most notable commissions came from the

new stadholder Willem III who sat for ter Borch first in

Deventer and later in The Hague; both portraits are

now lost.90 As for Deventer citizens, a few did request

the full-length format, but most did not, including Gis-

bert Cuper who chose representation in miniature (fig.

20).9' The unity that characterized Deventer portraiture

during the i65os and i66os, a unity that could even ac- commodate some sartorial expressiveness, was lost.

That historical moment had passed, along with the so-

cial structures in which these earlier portraits had been

embedded.

CARLETON COLLEGE

NORTHFIELD

MINNESOTA

87 See, for example, P. Cunnington, Costume in pictures, London

I964, pp. 72-73; and D. de Marly, Costume and civilization: Louis XIV

and Versailles, London I987, fig. 33. My thanks to Irene Groeneweg for

the rich material that she put at my disposal in this regard.

88 Wieseman, op. cit. (note 26), p. I I 2.

89 Portrait of _ohan van Reede-Ginkel (Gudl. 264), ca. mid-i67os, art market I985; and Portrait of Unico van Ripperda, Heer van Weldaam

and Olidam, ca. i68o (Gudl. 286), Kasteel Keppel, Van Pallandt-Stich-

ting. He also painted a Portrait ofan unidentified military officer (Gudl. 287), ca. i68o, St Petersburg, Hermitage, influenced by Netscher's

more animated style.

go Gudlaugsson, op. cit. (note i), vol. I, pp. 154, I65, vol. 2, pp. 29, 262. The first portrait of Willem iII, (Gudl. c I41), I672, though never

finished, was soon destroyed by Munster and Cologne forces. See also

Gudl. c 135-40.

9I The Portrait of a standing gentleman (Gudl. 290), ca. I675, Kas-

sel, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, is one of the only full-length stand-

ing portraits from these years, although several full-length seated por-

traits survive, including the portraits of preacher Jan van Duren and

his wife Lucretia Rouse (Gudl. 292, 293), i68i. Ter Borch's Portrait of

Gisbert Cuper (fig. 2o; Gudl. i68), a miniature in a frame probably car-

ved by Daniels, dates from ca. I675.


gerard ter borch's portraits for the deventer elite

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