Master Paintings and Sculpture Part II
Master Paintings and Sculpture Part II
Property from a Private South American Collection
Follower of Gerard ter Borch (II)
Two soldiers in an interior
Auction Closed
January 27, 09:38 PM GMT
Estimate
8,000 - 12,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
Property from a Private South American Collection
Follower of Gerard ter Borch (II)
Two soldiers in an interior
oil on canvas, laid on panel
unframed: 20 by 15⅜ in.; 50.8 by 39.1 cm.
framed: 30½ by 25⅝ in.; 77.5 by 65.1 cm.
Samuel Borchard (1868-1930), New York, by 1924 (in his collection by this year according to a notation in the Frick Art Reference Library Archive);
Thence by descent to his son, Stuart Borchard;
By whom sold ("Dutch and Flemish Paintings...from the Samuel Borchard Collection sold by order of Stuart Borchard"), New York, Parke-Bernet, 9 January 1947, lot 35 (as Gerard Terborch);
With Newhouse Galleries, New York;
By whom anonymously sold, New York, Sotheby's, 12 January 1979, lot 39, for $5,500 (as School of Gerard Ter Borch);
Where acquired by Lane Fine Art.
This work is freely based on Gerard ter Borch's An Officer dictating a Letter in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG5487).1 In his catalogue raisonné in the artist, Sturla J. Gudlaugsson lists about ten copies or variants after Ter Borch's original in London,2 and in composition, the present example comes closest to a version in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden.3 Gudlaugsson published the Dresden canvas as probably a workshop production, identifying Caspar Netscher as a possible candidate, although both of these attributions are no longer accepted.
Although Gudlaugsson and Hofstede de Groot both considered the present lot a copy, Willem von Bode believed it an original by Ter Borch, as outlined in his 1922 letter in the possession of Samuel Borchard, a former owner. In his letter, Bode favored the present painting over the Dresden example, which he deemed a weak replica, and he praised it for having all of the pure and delicate technique of Terborch's best paintings of 1655-1660.4
1. Inv. no. NG5487, oil on canvas, 74.5 by 51 cm, signed.
2. Gudlaugsson 1960, pp. 150-152, cat. nos, 141a-141j.
3. Inv. no. Gal.-Nr. 1829, oil on canvas, 51.5 by 38.5 cm. Gudlaugsson 1960, p. 151, cat. no. 141b, reproduced plate XVI, fig. 2.
4. Letter dated 2 July 1922, transcribed in the Frick Art Reference Library archive cards.