The Concert

Created between 1673 and 1675, *The Concert* is an oil painting on an oak panel, measuring 56 by 44 centimeters. The work exhibits the artist's signature technique of rendering metallic reflections and carefully textured fabrics, particularly seen in the white dress and red jacket of the foreground cellist. However, the surface also displays loose, broad brushstrokes and a brightly lit room, stylistic elements atypical for the artist's usual refined smoothness. These divergences stem from significant alterations: Ter Borch himself overpainted the original male harpsichordist to create a female figure, a laborious process evidenced by X-ray analysis. Later, a 1893 restoration by Professor Hauser drastically reworked the background figure's dress and the large background area with his own loose handling. This intervention obscured the original smooth structure, imparting an almost impressionistic character to the panel while enhancing the colors.

The painting was created by Gerard ter Borch around 1675 as an oil on panel work. Ter Borch altered the scene after initial execution, changing the harpsichord player from a young man to a woman, a modification documented through X-ray analysis and a surviving copy in the Stedelijk Museum Zwolle titled Couple Making Music. In 1893, Berlin restorer Hauser performed a major intervention that repainted parts of the background and the background figure's dress, significantly altering the original brushwork and color palette. The work entered the Gemäldegalerie Berlin collection through the ownership of Charles Sedelmeyer and Wilhelm von Bode, and remains there today.

The Concert is held in the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Germany. According to the Wikidata record, the painting was at one time owned by the dealer Charles Sedelmeyer and by Wilhelm von Bode before entering the Berlin state collections. No specific accession number is provided in the available sources.

The work's documented exhibition history is limited. A faithful copy made by Ter Borch himself, titled Couple Making Music (Musicerend paar), now hangs in the Stedelijk Museum in Zwolle, indicating that the original was known and reproducible within the artist's circle. In 1893, the Berlin professor Hauser carried out a radical restoration of the painting while it was in poor condition, reworking the background figure and overpainting large areas of the composition. No further exhibition venues or dates are recorded in the sources.

Scholarly discussion of The Concert (c. 1673-1675) emphasizes Gerard ter Borch’s deliberate cultivation of narrative ambiguity, inviting viewers to interpret the psychological interplay between the two seated women without explicit narrative cues. Technical studies reveal two significant interventions that shape modern perception. Ter Borch himself altered the composition by transforming the keyboard player from a young man into a woman, a change documented by X-radiography and corroborated by a closely related contemporary copy, Couple Making Music (Stedelijk Museum Zwolle). A later, controversial restoration in 1893 by Berlin’s Professor Hauser heightened color saturation and introduced broad, loose brushwork, especially in the background and the secondary figure, shifting the work toward an impressionistic effect that departs from Ter Borch’s characteristic refinement. Despite these alterations, the painting retains a strong intrinsic quality, highlighting the proximity of seventeenth-century Dutch classicism to later realist and impressionist tendencies.