Bildnis einer Frau mit Fächer

Bildnis einer Frau mit Fächer (Portrait of a Woman with a Fan), painted around 1655, demonstrates ter Borch's mastery of the social prop as a device for conveying feminine elegance and status. The fan — an expensive import associated with aristocratic fashion in both the Dutch Republic and the wider European courts — functions here as a marker of wealth and refinement, its delicate form providing a counterpoint to the voluminous fabric of the sitter's dress. By the mid-1650s ter Borch had settled into the compositional approach that would define his career: restrained backgrounds, meticulous costume detail, and a close attention to the sitter's face that individualized each portrait even when the sitter's identity has since been lost. This painting is held by the Gemäldegalerie Berlin, whose extensive Dutch and Flemish holdings include multiple works by ter Borch acquired over the museum's long collecting history.

The fan is rendered with fine detail, its folded structure and surface pattern indicated through thin, precise brushstrokes against a lighter ground. Ter Borch builds the woman's dress through his characteristic multi-layered approach, with the surface texture of the fabric differentiated from its tonal modelling. The composition centers the fan as a strong diagonal in the lower half of the picture.