About 1635 Ter Borch went to London and later on he traveled extensively in Germany, France, Spain and Italy. In 1641 he painted some small portraits on copper in Rome. Seven years later he was at Münster during the meeting of the congress which ratified the treaty of peace between Spain and the Netherlands. It was there that he did his famous little picture on copper of the assembled ministers. This picture, together with the “Guitar Lesson” and a “Portrait of a Man Standing,” is now in the National Gallery. The picture of the peace commissioners was bought by the Marquess of Hertford for $36,400, and presented to the gallery by Sir Richard Wallace.
About this time Ter Borch was invited to visit Madrid in Spain. There King Phillip IV gave him employment and honored him with knighthood. However, the artist became involved in an intrigue and was forced to return to Holland.
There he lived for a time at Haarlem. Later on he finally settled in Deventer, where he became a member of the town council. It is as a member of this body that he appears in the portrait now in the Gallery of the Hague. Ter Borch died at Deventer in 1681.
Some critics rank this artist very close to Rembrandt and Franz Hals. He liked to portray the higher social circles of his day with all the stately pomp that distinguished them. This took delicate technical skill in the representation of costly costumes, and in addition to all this, Ter Borch was able to give a poetic charm to the interior of the houses which he portrayed, throwing romantic interest over anything.
The paintings of Ter Borch are quite rare. Only about eighty have been catalogued. His work is free from the touch of grossness that characterized many of the Dutch artists of the time.
PREPARED BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF OF THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION ILLUSTRATION FOR THE MENTOR, VOL. 4, No. 4, SERIAL No. 104 COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THE MENTOR ASSOCIATION, INC.
LADY COCKBURN AND CHILDREN. BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS]
Monograph Number Six in The Mentor Reading Course
Sir Joshua Reynolds was one of the greatest of English portrait painters; and as a painter of childhood he has no superior. He was a rapid worker, and it is estimated by some authorities that he finished as many as 3,000 portraits. His career was one long series of successes, and he made an immense fortune by his painting.