Woman in Peasant Costume

A young woman sits in profile with a printed sheet in her hand and looks up from it for a moment. Ter Borch probably used his half-sister Gesina as the model, and she often sat for him. Her plaits gathered up under a red band would have told any 17th-century viewer at once that she was an unmarried country girl, and the yellow bodice and plain white sleeves belong to the same costume. Everything around her is left dark, apart from a cushion on the table beside her. The picture is small, painted around 1648 to 1650 in oil on paper that was later mounted on a wooden panel. When it came up for sale in The Hague in 1737, the catalogue described it as a seated little peasant girl with a letter in her hand, painted from life and uncommonly detailed.