Lady at her Toilet

Around 1660 Caspar Netscher was just finishing his apprenticeship, and this is thought to be the earliest picture he made on his own. It shows a young woman at her toilette, being dressed and groomed in the shimmering satin the Dutch elite liked to be seen in. For a long time no one believed a beginner had painted it. The work was taken for a Gerard ter Borch, the older master Netscher had trained under, and someone even added ter Borch's monogram in the lower right to make the point stick. That signature is now regarded as a later forgery. It was the scholar Sturla Gudlaugsson who first gave the painting back to Netscher, and specialists since have agreed, reading it as the moment a gifted pupil stepped out from under a famous teacher while still painting almost exactly like him. What sold the illusion was the handling of the cloth, the slow, patient sheen on satin and silk that Netscher would spend the rest of his career perfecting for wealthy sitters. Look at the lower corner and you can still find that false monogram, the small fraud that kept his own name off the picture for generations.