Intently focused on her music book, an elegantly attired lady strums on her bent-necked theorbo to the beat established by her music instructor. The scene must have been familiar in the homes of well-to-do Dutch burghers, for the playing of music was a popular and socially acceptable activity among unmarried young people, particularly women. Numerous depictions of music lessons exist in Dutch art. Not only did the subject provide an opportunity to depict a leisure activity within a domestic setting, but it also was one in which the many symbolic allusions of music, from harmony to love and seduction, could be thematically exploited. It is not by accident, for example, that Ter Borch depicted an ace of hearts on the floor in a similar painting in the National Gallery, London [fig. 1]
[fig. 1] Gerard ter Borch the Younger, A Woman Playing a Theorbo to Two Men, 1667–1668, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London. Photo © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY. The Music Lesson, however, does not include such a motif, nor the bed, the dog, and the young suitor seen in the London painting, indicating that romantic concerns were not the thematic thrust of this work. It focuses instead on the woman’s intense concentration as she strives to master the harmonies of the music she is learning to play.
The comparison with the London painting reveals that the woman’s pose as well as the general disposition of the room and still-life elements on the table in The Music Lesson are virtually identical. While Ter Borch did occasionally repeat compositions and readapt figures in his paintings, stylistic comparisons between the women in the two paintings demonstrate that different hands were at work. The modeling of the woman’s face and hands in the London painting creates a greater sense of three-dimensionality than that in the Washington version, and the impression of sheen on the satin dress and the soft textural qualities of the fur jacket are more convincingly rendered. Similar comparisons can be made with the outstretched hand of the music master, and with the candlestick and cloth on the table.
Connections between The Music Lesson and other Ter Borch paintings also exist. As Gudlaugsson has pointed out, the music master replicates in reverse a figure in the depiction of a music lesson formerly in the Roach Collection. He concluded that The Music Lesson is a pastiche, a joining together of motifs from the Roach and London paintings. Just when such a pastiche would have been made is difficult to determine. Since Gudlaugsson brings into his discussion a later mezzotint by Jan Stolker (Dutch, 1724 - 1785) that reproduces the Roach painting in reverse, he seems to imply that The Music Lesson must have been produced long after Ter Borch’s lifetime. Nevertheless, the quality of the painting is sufficiently high to assume that an artist working under Ter Borch’s supervision created it.
Little is known about Ter Borch’s studio, but the large number of replicas and versions of his paintings indicates that a widespread demand existed for his works. Caspar Netscher (Dutch, 1639 - 1684), who studied with Ter Borch before going to Italy in 1658 or 1659, made copies of his master’s paintings. Ter Borch continued to use assistants and students for such work, even to the extent of encouraging them to create new compositions by combining elements from a variety of his images. It is probable that one of Ter Borch’s assistants derived his reversed image of the music master from a counterproof of Ter Borch’s preliminary drawing.
Arthur K. Wheelock Jr.
April 24, 2014
