The Music Lesson

From the museum

Gerard ter Borch specialized in small-scale portraits and scenes of everyday life. He often painted images like this one, featuring military officers and elegant young women conversing, making music, or exchanging letters. Here, a lady plays an elaborate stringed instrument, the double-headed lute, while her companion marks the tempo for her. He is presumably her music instructor, but the similarity in their ages and the presence of the bed in the background make the precise relationship of the figures tantalizingly ambiguous.

Gift of Charles T. Yerkes

Materials & technique

Technique: oil painting, painting, painting (image making), painting techniques.

Provenance

Possibly sold Amsterdam, October 1, 1738, no. 19 for 200 florins [according to Gudlaugsson 1960; see Gerard Hoet, Catalogus of naamlyst van Schilderyen (The Hague, 1752), p. 556]. Probably Johan Pieter Wierman, Leyden; his sale, Amsterdam, August 18, 1762, no. 34 to Diemen [price and buyer according to an annotated sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague; although the provenance of this painting and the Getty example have been confused in the past, the AIC view was probably in the Wierman collection because the music master is described as beating time with a – strykstok – or bow]. Probably Jan Jacob Brants (died 1813); sold his sale Pieter Yver, Amsterdam, April 20, 1813, lot 30 for 275 florins to Jer. deVries [price and buyer according to an annotated sale catalogue in the Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie, The Hague; although the provenance of this painting and the Getty example have been confused in the past, the AIC view was probably in the Brants collection because the music master is described as beating time with a – strijkstok – or bow]. Possibly John Fairlie, Esq. [according to Smith 1833]; possibly his sale, 1830, for 130 gs to Michael Peacock [sale information according to Smith 1833]; possibly Michael Peacock (died 1843), London; possibly sold his sale Foster and Son, February 28, 1844, lot 12. Presumably Prince Anatole Demidoff, Villa San Donato, near Florence (died 1870); by descent to his nephew Prince Paul Demidoff (died 1885) and later to Paul Demidoff’s widow Helena Troubetskoi, Pratolino, near Florence [according to an entry in William French’s 1889 travel notebook dated April 19, 1889, the painting was on view with the Demidoff collection in Pratolino, Art Institute Archives]; included in the group of 13 paintings from the Demidoff collection sold to trustees of the Art Institute through Durand-Ruel, Paris, in 1890; purchase price reimbursed by Charles T. Yerkes, 1890.

Where to see The Music Lesson

Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. View on the museum’s official page.

See more works at Art Institute of Chicago or browse the full Gerard ter Borch the Younger collection.