Gesina ter Borch

by Adam Eaker

144 pages, Hardcover

Published October 15, 2024

Reviews

[Theediscerning · Rating 4 out of 5]

I honestly feared the worst for this. No seventeenth century female artist, especially one who had never been the subject of a single-topic book before, should have her reputation soiled by a general series introduction with "#BLM" and other nonsense within it that she could never have recognised. This, I dreaded, was going to be a woke-fest, turning her into something she demonstrably was not, for the furtherance of modern academic trends. But luckily this reins all of that in, allowing us to actually learn the subject and not the author's socio-political leanings.

The subject was a well-connected young lass, who didn't have the same training as her brothers received from their father, but all the same had an eye, and an urgency to keep their family archive together. In not being trained, and in not being in the art world per se, she could be deemed an "amateur" – yet her output is more than decent enough to be in the Rijksmuseum, keeping her and her family's efforts in the attention of increasing numbers of specialists. It can speak to them of what it meant to be a woman, of how the married status killed off the artist career for many at that time, and how Gesina avoided all that, but it can just show the interests of a decent watercolourist with no commercial obligations.

Her output principally is a set of three personal albums, where her accepted hobby of calligraphy was married to her habit of copying out poems and song verses she liked, and illustrating them in watercolour. While probably kept in a drawer at home and only shown to a select few, enough notable men offered a poem declaring her and the works' excellence, and those get added as well, making the lot an extended scrapbook, more or less. But in bequeathing the selection – and what she owned of the family's portraits and suchlike – she managed to generate a kind of time capsule of her thoughts – her husband-free, childless state, her outdoorsiness so at odds with the norms of the housewife, and her place on par with the work of her brother, which I have to admit to rating much more than hers.

There's a fine discussion of the three albums and their differences here, in generally chronological order. What there isn't is speculation about why and how she avoided matrimony – the art of the time shows women much less aesthetic than her were getting married. No, this sticks to the facts, and avoids such speculation, which is a welcome approach for a subject that proves to deserve such a volume. Perfectly illustrated, this will be a publication with a small audience, until translated into Dutch of course, but a very grateful and welcoming one. Specialists won't care for a star rating, and won't get one – the one I provide is directed at the layman such as the bloke that's just read it.

[Jax · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gesina ter Borch was a 17th century female Dutch watercolor artist whose work is held by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In her lifetime, she was considered an amateur as any woman would be `when pursuing an interest in something men were freely allowed to call a profession. The body of work that has survived is meager by some standards but enough to demonstrate her achievement.

Gesina was born into an artistic family and came by her talent naturally. She often sat for her famous brother Gerard, whose work influenced the likes of Vermeer. She also collaborated with her brother on a portrait of their brother Moses who died in battle. This monograph compares the sibling’s work and highlights her achievements in watercolors and calligraphy. It is a jewel of a book that will give its readers a greater appreciation for women who lived and worked during the Dutch Golden Age.

Many thanks to Getty Publications and NetGalley for providing this eARC.