Terborch, Gerard

Terborch, Gerard

 or Gerard ter Borch

(born 1617, Zwolle, Neth.—died Dec. 8, 1681, Deventer) Dutch painter. After travels in England, Italy, Westphalia, and Spain, he returned home in 1648 and settled in Deventer in 1654. His works consist almost equally of portraits and genre paintings. By subtlety of tonal gradations and mastery of rendering diverse textures, he achieved extraordinarily rich effects with the clothing in his portraits. His superb colour sense is seen to advantage in his interior genre pieces, in which he depicted with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of well-to-do middle-class life in 17th-century Holland.