Gerard ter Borch in the Metropolitan Museum is the Daily Pic by Blake Gopnik
Gerard ter Borch made headlines, while his rival in Delft was painting maids with earrings.
(Metropolitan Museum of Art, bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913)
Here we are again, on our regular Monday visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. This picture was painted in around 1658 by Gerard ter Borch, and is now on display in the Met's newly rehung Old Masters galleries. It is by Vermeer’s much more famous and successful contemporary, and lacks much of what we moderns love in Vermeer: His proto-photographic light, his cryptic, event-free subjects, his wide-angle deep space. That “lack” may be precisely why pre-modern Dutchmen so preferred ter Borch. As I’ve argued before, we may want to put ourselves in their eyes, and redress the balance between the two artists.
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