信

Gerard ter Borch built much of his career on quiet moments around letters, the writing, the reading, the waiting for an answer. He painted this one around 1660, in the prosperous middle years of the Dutch Republic, when ordinary merchant families could afford the kind of shining satin the lady on the right is wearing. She reads by lamplight while a boy and a woman watch her face for news. Two of the figures were his own family. The reading woman is his half-sister Gesina, the boy his half-brother Moses, both of whom sat for him often. Look at the hem of her gown, the embroidered border picked out thread by thread, among the finest fabric painting anyone managed in that century.