After Gerard ter Borch

This is an early copy after the drawing by Gerard ter Borch the Younger, in the Rijksprentenkabinet, Amsterdam (inv.no. A 1197; see A. McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate in the Rijksmuseum, 2 vols., The Hague 1988, vol. I, pp. 128-9, cat. no. GJr 60). The Ter Borch original enetered the museum's collection together with the rest of the Ter Borch studio estate in 1888, prior to which it remained in the posession of the artist's family.  The present drawing may well, therefore, have been made by a Ter Borch family member.  Robert van Voerst was a notable engraver, who made several of the plates for Van Dyck's Iconography. He was also Ter Borch's step-uncle, with whom Gerard stayed when he visited London in 1635-6, and the Rijksmuseum drawing must date from this visit.