1670
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
The Music Lesson is a 1670 oil by Gerard ter Borch, a Baroque work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
A woman plays a double-headed lute while a man marks the tempo for her. This scene looks like a music lesson, but it's not clear if the man is just her teacher. The woman and man seem to be around the same age, which makes their relationship interesting. The bed in the background also adds to the mystery. The way the light falls on the subjects is notable, using a technique like glazing to create depth.
Gerard ter Borch specialized in small-scale portraits and scenes of everyday life. He often painted images like this one, featuring military officers and elegant young women conversing, making music, or exchanging letters. Here, a lady plays an elaborate stringed instrument, the double-headed lute, while her companion marks the tempo for her. He is presumably her music instructor, but the similarity in their ages and the presence of the bed in the background make the precise relationship of the figures tantalizingly ambiguous.
Possibly sold Amsterdam, October 1, 1738, no. 19 for 200 florins [according to Gudlaugsson 1960; see Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van Schilderyen (The Hague, 1752), p. 556]. Probably Johan Pieter Wierman, Leyden; his sale, Amsterdam, August 18, 1762, no. 34 to Diemen [price and buyer according to an annotated sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague; although the provenance of this painting and the Getty example have been confused in the past, the AIC view was probably in the Wierman collection because the music master is described as beating time…
Detroit Institute of Arts, The Ninth Loan Exhibition: Dutch Genre and Landscape Painting of the Seventeenth Century, October 16–November 10, 1929, no. 74. New York World’s Fair, European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300–1800, May–October 1939, no. 368. City Art Museum of St. Louis, 40 Masterpieces: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings from American Museums, October 6–November 10, 1947, no. 37. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, June 1–November 1, 1933, no. 79. Art Institute of Chicago, A Century of Progress, June 1–November 1, 1934, no. 113.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Gerard ter Borch (Dutch: ; December 1617 – 8 December 1681), also known as Gerard Terburg (Dutch: ), was a Dutch Golden Age painter mainly of genre subjects.
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