Gerard Ter Borch

You pretty much have to start with satin when it comes to 17th-century Dutch painter Gerard ter Borch: for centuries, viewers have fixated on the artist's ability to reproduce the texture and sheen of satin with seemingly miraculous realism. In this study, published in conjunction with an exhibit at the National Gallery of Art and Detroit Institute of Art, Wheelock and his contributors manfully tackle the satin issue head-on, while also ingeniously using it as a springboard for exploring the painter's subtler talents. Arie Wallert's essay, complete with x-radiographs and UV-illuminated close-ups of the artist's canvases, uncovers the artist's special wiping techniques, and argues that far more important to the uncanny effects was Ter Borch's close observation of shadows and light. But it's his observations of people that the writers show to be the artist's more significant gift. Ter Borch may have made a living as a portraitist to the middle class, but he made a specialty of sympathetic but unsentimental depictions of people in odd moments of their day, often staring distractedly into space--a little boy being groomed by his mother, for instance, or a woman looking up from a book. Though Wheelock is given to labored, pedantic analysis (e.g., ""Ter Borch's sympathetic portrayal of the boy's concern for his dog indicates he intended no negative commentary on the boy's neglect of his studies, which is implicit in the pen and book that sit idly on the table beside him""), he nonetheless effectively points out the great originality of these slice-of-life canvases, many of which are virtually without precedent in their subject matter and mixture of genres. Beautifully illustrated, carefully laid out, this book allows viewers' eyes to adjust to the dazzle of Ter Borch's satin and awaken to the deeper, more delicate pleasures of his work.