Portrait of Johanna Quadacker (1640-1672)

Portrait of Johanna Quadacker, painted in 1661 when the sitter was twenty-one years old, is one of a small group of ter Borch portraits in which the sitter can be securely identified by name and documented life dates. Johanna Quadacker died young, in 1672, at the age of thirty-two, adding a note of poignancy to a portrait that may have functioned as part of a marriage pair or family ensemble. Ter Borch's female portraits of this period are among his most polished achievements, combining precise observation of fashionable dress — he had an almost unparalleled ability to render the complex textures of silk, satin, and lace — with a characterization of his female sitters as composed, self-possessed, and quietly confident. This painting passed through the Charles Sedelmeyer collection, the important Parisian dealership that played a major role in dispersing Dutch Golden Age paintings to major European collectors in the late nineteenth century.

Oil on canvas, this portrait is built around the luminous satin or silk dress that constitutes its most technically demanding passage. Ter Borch layers transparent glazes to construct the fabric's shimmering surface, using a warm ground showing through in half-shadow areas to unify the tonal range. The face above is modelled with a comparable delicacy, each feature observed without idealization.