Gerard ter Borch

In May 1648 the delegates who ended the Eighty Years' War met in the German city of Munster to swear the peace that finally recognised the Dutch Republic. Gerard ter Borch was there and painted the ceremony on a small copper plate, packing dozens of tiny portrait heads into a single room. He put himself in at the far left, looking out at us.

That eye for a real moment carried into the quiet indoor scenes he is loved for. Ter Borch painted small, and he painted fabric better than almost anyone, the cool sheen of white satin on a woman's skirt seen from behind. His figures write letters, tune instruments, or pause mid-conversation, and you are never quite told what is being said.

He worked mostly in the eastern town of Deventer, served a term on its council, and trained the young Caspar Netscher, who carried the polished style on. One of his best-known pictures, long called The Paternal Admonition, shows a scene that later viewers reinterpreted as something a good deal less wholesome.