Portrait of a Woman (c. 1665): Art, History and Details

Portrait of a Woman (c. 1665) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Gerard ter Borch (Dutch, 1617–1681).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Every detail of his subject’s elaborate costume is skillfully recorded: glittering jewels, filmy lace, knots of ribbons, heavy black silk, and shimmering white satin. The ability to recreate satin’s luster was Gerard ter Borch’s particular trademark: he used fine flicks and sweeps of the brush, occasionally adding and wiping away tiny bits of paint to make the white fabric appear to shine. Ter Borch offset the profusion of costume detail by deliberately isolating the figure within a spare setting, allowing us to appreciate the woman’s cool composure. Although her identity is not known, she was undoubtedly a member of the wealthy Dutch elite.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of a Woman
• Date: c. 1665
• Creator attribution: Gerard ter Borch (Dutch, 1617–1681)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 87.5 x 77 x 7 cm (34 7/16 x 30 5/16 x 2 3/4 in.); Unframed: 63.3 x 52.7 cm (24 15/16 x 20 3/4 in.)
• Collection: P - Netherlandish-Dutch
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1944.93

A detail from the museum

The pair to this painting (in the National Gallery, London), depicts a man in equally fashionable dress.

Collection credit

The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Graves, Algernon. Century of Loan Exhibitions 1813-1912. London: Graves, 1913.
• Hofstede de Groot, C. P. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the Seventeenth Century. 8 vols London: Macmillan and Co, 1908-.
• Catalogue of the Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition : June Twenty-Sixth to October Fourth 1936. [Cleveland, Ohio]: [Cleveland Museum of Art], 1936.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.