Painting as meditation
This 17th-century ter Borch work conveys the mystery of a jam-packed moment
There are very few artists one might sincerely prefer to Johannes Vermeer, but for me, Gerard ter Borch — a Dutch painter who created the conditions for Vermeer’s emergence — is one. Ter Borch is known by people casually acquainted with his work as “the Master of the Silk Dress”: His ability to capture interior light skittering off crinkled silk was unrivaled.
In truth, he could paint anything. Yet, far from being a showoff, ter Borch (1617-1681) was a virtuoso in confident possession of incomparable tact — a sort of Sviatoslav Richter (the late Ukrainian-born pianist) of oil painting. Ter Borch understood that art was continuous with life and that the highest aesthetic merit derived from giving things their proper weight.
When I contemplate the many shades of gray that ter Borch used to represent the dappled horse in his “Horse Stable,” at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, I think of Vladimir Nabokov’s description of his countryman Anton Chekhov. Chekhov, wrote Nabokov, “managed to convey an impression of artistic beauty far surpassing that of many writers who thought they knew what rich, beautiful prose was. He did it by keeping all his words in the same dim light and of the same exact tint of gray, a tint between the color of an old fence and that of a low cloud.”
Ter Borch was a wonderful, rich colorist, whose palette was by no means limited to gray. But Nabokov’s point — that the variety of Chekhov’s moods, “the flicker of his charming wit, the deeply artistic economy of characterization, the vivid detail, and the fade-out of human life” are all contained within a sensibility founded on moderation, understatement and uncertainty — applies equally to ter Borch.
To look at “Horse Stable” is to fall into a kind of meditation. The mantra might be: Everything, right here, in this moment. A man grooms a dappled gray horse (in Dutch, schimmel or appelschimmel) as it feeds from a trough. Warm yet tenuous, cloud-pressed light — Dutch light — enters in from over our left shoulder. A woman — probably the artist’s wife — appears through a door to the right. Her earring and gold necklace suggest that she is the lady of the house. Her feet are cut off from view by a bucket.
What is she about to say? Has the man registered her presence? Such questions arise out of the atmosphere of anticipation ter Borch so tenderly conjures. But they form and dissipate like mists around mountain peaks. The answers don’t matter. Everything, right here, in this moment.
The man has leaned a wooden post against one of the planks enclosing the feed bin to create a makeshift stall for the horse as he grooms it. Ter Borch thereby sets up a strong diagonal, parallel to the top of the hayrack above the feed bin, and perpendicular to the hayrack’s supporting ribs.
The man has hung his jacket from an almost upright wooden pole, from which the horse’s bridle also hangs. The jacket’s folds cast beautiful shadows. Its light blue trimming enriches the horse’s blue-gray coat, contrasting with the scene’s scattered outbreaks of red: the lady’s dress, the man’s cap, the brick floor and the broken wall at far left.
The hay. The horsehair. The wood in various conditions of finish and wear. The metal of the pitchfork and the handle of the bucket. How do you get paint to convey all that?
Perhaps, given the requisite talent, you could learn. But then, what about the overall atmosphere of calm, the sense of complicity between humans and animals nested inside a fog of congested unknowns? How, as a painter, do you convey such an acute awareness of life’s mysterious immanence, even in moments of transition?
Ter Borch had married the sister of his stepmother the year he painted “Horse Stable.” He understood, I think, that to paint was to involve oneself in something intimate and profoundly mysterious — something to do with grace. And he knew, perhaps, that a horse’s large, wet eye might convey this as powerfully as a well-dressed woman’s inquiring look toward a man brushing down the stippled hindquarters of that very same horse. Awareness is constantly corkscrewing in conspiratorial circles as the light gradually dims; everything, right here, in this moment.
Great Works, In Focus
Painting as meditation
This 17th-century ter Borch work conveys the mystery of a jam-packed moment
There are very few artists one might sincerely prefer to Johannes Vermeer, but for me, Gerard ter Borch — a Dutch painter who created the conditions for Vermeer’s emergence — is one. Ter Borch is known by people casually acquainted with his work as “the Master of the Silk Dress”: His ability to capture interior light skittering off crinkled silk was unrivaled.
In truth, he could paint anything. Yet, far from being a showoff, ter Borch (1617-1681) was a virtuoso in confident possession of incomparable tact — a sort of Sviatoslav Richter (the late Ukrainian-born pianist) of oil painting. Ter Borch understood that art was continuous with life and that the highest aesthetic merit derived from giving things their proper weight.
When I contemplate the many shades of gray that ter Borch used to represent the dappled horse in his “Horse Stable,” at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, I think of Vladimir Nabokov’s description of his countryman Anton Chekhov. Chekhov, wrote Nabokov, “managed to convey an impression of artistic beauty far surpassing that of many writers who thought they knew what rich, beautiful prose was. He did it by keeping all his words in the same dim light and of the same exact tint of gray, a tint between the color of an old fence and that of a low cloud.”
Ter Borch was a wonderful, rich colorist, whose palette was by no means limited to gray. But Nabokov’s point — that the variety of Chekhov’s moods, “the flicker of his charming wit, the deeply artistic economy of characterization, the vivid detail, and the fade-out of human life” are all contained within a sensibility founded on moderation, understatement and uncertainty — applies equally to ter Borch.
To look at “Horse Stable” is to fall into a kind of meditation. The mantra might be: Everything, right here, in this moment. A man grooms a dappled gray horse (in Dutch, schimmel or appelschimmel) as it feeds from a trough. Warm yet tenuous, cloud-pressed light — Dutch light — enters in from over our left shoulder. A woman — probably the artist’s wife — appears through a door to the right. Her earring and gold necklace suggest that she is the lady of the house. Her feet are cut off from view by a bucket.
What is she about to say? Has the man registered her presence? Such questions arise out of the atmosphere of anticipation ter Borch so tenderly conjures. But they form and dissipate like mists around mountain peaks. The answers don’t matter. Everything, right here, in this moment.
The man has leaned a wooden post against one of the planks enclosing the feed bin to create a makeshift stall for the horse as he grooms it. Ter Borch thereby sets up a strong diagonal, parallel to the top of the hayrack above the feed bin, and perpendicular to the hayrack’s supporting ribs.
The man has hung his jacket from an almost upright wooden pole, from which the horse’s bridle also hangs. The jacket’s folds cast beautiful shadows. Its light blue trimming enriches the horse’s blue-gray coat, contrasting with the scene’s scattered outbreaks of red: the lady’s dress, the man’s cap, the brick floor and the broken wall at far left.
The hay. The horsehair. The wood in various conditions of finish and wear. The metal of the pitchfork and the handle of the bucket. How do you get paint to convey all that?
Perhaps, given the requisite talent, you could learn. But then, what about the overall atmosphere of calm, the sense of complicity between humans and animals nested inside a fog of congested unknowns? How, as a painter, do you convey such an acute awareness of life’s mysterious immanence, even in moments of transition?
Ter Borch had married the sister of his stepmother the year he painted “Horse Stable.” He understood, I think, that to paint was to involve oneself in something intimate and profoundly mysterious — something to do with grace. And he knew, perhaps, that a horse’s large, wet eye might convey this as powerfully as a well-dressed woman’s inquiring look toward a man brushing down the stippled hindquarters of that very same horse. Awareness is constantly corkscrewing in conspiratorial circles as the light gradually dims; everything, right here, in this moment.