The Messenger, known as 'The Unwelcome News'

A painting sold in Amsterdam in 1707, possibly this one, was listed simply as a trumpeter with a commander, and it went for 92 guilders. The title the panel carries now, The Unwelcome News, came later and reads a small drama into the scene. A soldier takes a letter from a messenger while a young woman leans against him. The Mauritshuis imagines the letter calling him back to the front, away from her, and Ter Borch leaves it at that. He signed and dated it on a stone at the left, GTB and 1653. A century later it belonged to Govert van Slingelandt, a collector in The Hague, whose whole collection was sold to Prince William V of Orange in 1768. When the French occupied the Republic in 1795 they took the prince's paintings to Paris, and this one was kept at the Louvre until 1815. It came back to The Hague and entered the Mauritshuis in 1822.