Gesina ter Borch : Illuminating Women Artists - Adam Eaker

Gesina ter Borch

By: Adam Eaker

Hardcover | 13 January 2025

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Gesina ter Borch (1631-1690) was a Dutch watercolourist and draughtswoman whose work survives primarily in the form of three albums of watercolours and calligraphy, now held at the Rijksmuseum. Despite the fact that her oeuvre is securely attributed and thoroughly catalogued, Ter Borch has surprisingly never been the subject of an independent monograph or sustained discussion, until now. For the first time, this book highlights Ter Borch's watercolours and calligraphy in their own right, as well as her work as an art teacher, an archivist, and an artist's model, and questions a historiography of women's art that frequently valorises painting over other media, and work for the market over 'amateur' production.

Adam Eaker revisits Gesina ter Borch's role in the genesis of Dutch 'high-life' genre painting and its construction of gender and social class, comparing her art with that of her brother Gerard, and in so doing allows for a more nuanced understanding of the ideologies and achievements of Dutch genre painting.

Industry Reviews

In this eloquent study, Adam Eaker has built a nuanced and engaging portrait of Gesina ter Borch, one that gives her voice and shows her range of complexities and contradictions. Moreover, he has demonstrated the depth of Gesina's ambitions as an artist, and convincingly argued that she was an instrumental figure in the development of her brother Gerard's distinctive and influential genre imagery. - Ilona van Tuinen, Head of the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam



Adam Eaker's book is long overdue. He places Gesina ter Borch in fascinating new contexts and he also uses her as a lens to illustrate how a woman of this period understood contemporary visual culture, and could sometimes read written materials against their moralistic grain. It is a fascinating study that does full justice to an important female voice. - Elizabeth Alice Honig, University of Maryland



Precluded by her gender, class, and times from becoming a professional painter, Gesina ter Borch crafted for herself an immeasurably rich intellectual and artistic life apart from the thriving 17th-century Dutch art market. Drawing on Gesina's albums of visually stunning watercolors, Adam Eaker tells the story of a modern woman - a painter, poet, musician, family archivist, and chronicler of her times - driven to create by love of art. - H. Perry Chapman, Editor in chief, Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art and Professor emerita, University of Delaware

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