Portrait of a man

Portrait of a Man from 1650 by Gerard ter Borch shows the Dutch painter's refined approach to male portraiture. Ter Borch worked primarily in Deventer, where he was the leading painter, though his reputation extended throughout the Dutch Republic. Ter Borch's extraordinary ability to render silk, satin, and velvet with a tactile reality unsurpassed in Dutch Golden Age painting made him the supreme painter of the Dutch upper middle class, his small elegant panels providing the definitive image of prosperous seventeenth-century society.

The portrait displays ter Borch's characteristic precision and restraint, with the sitter rendered with careful attention to costume and physiognomy.