Gerard Terborch (1617-1681) was the creator of the
“Conversation-piece,” and one of the earliest to portray the well born
engaged in music lessons and similar occupations; he was one of the
greatest of the Dutch “small-masters,” and in every way the superior
of the uninspired Dou. Terborch invites us to join him in the fine
decorum of a noble chamber where the appointments are carefully tended,
while its occupants give themselves up to cultured, if not perhaps
deeply intellectual, pursuits. We forget all about the carousing and
bestial profligates who people the taverns of Jan Steen and much
less accomplished painters, and watch the refined fingers stray over
the keyboard of the open spinet or sweep the strings of a well-made
mandoline, as in the _Concert_ (No. 2589, Plate XXXIII.). Equally fine
are the two _Music Lessons_ (No. 2588 and No. 2591), the former being
signed and dated 1660.
The _Military Galant_ (No. 2587) exhibits Terborch’s dexterity in the
rendering of reflected light on a red tablecloth, although the subject
has an innuendo which hardly adds to its charm. The _Ecclesiastical
Assembly_ (No. 2590) is only a small sketch on panel, and affords but
a feeble echo of this painter’s masterpiece, the _Ratification of the
Peace of Münster_, in the National Gallery. Terborch was a pupil of
his father, who had visited Italy, and he studied also under Pieter
Molyn the Elder at Haarlem previous to visiting England in 1635. He
travelled much more extensively than most of his contemporaries, and
went to Spain during the best period of art in the Peninsula. He does
not seem to have been dependent on his professional success for his
living, which was passed in easy circumstances. Nor did he busy himself
as a teacher, his only direct pupil being Caspar Netscher (1639-1684),
who gives us a _Music Lesson_ (No. 2486), of the approved stamp, and a
_Violoncello Lesson_ (No. 2487).