Moses ter Borch

Overall condition good. Paper appears to have been cleaned, but surface of drawing and chalk remain strong, significantly stronger than in catalogue illustration. Color of chalk is less brown than in image. Repaired cut in paper, lower right corner. Light crease, left side, below center. Small repaired hole towards top right. Sold in a modern carved and gilded frame.
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Moses ter Borch, the youngest child of Gerard ter Borch, showed great talent as a young draftsman, but at about 20 years of age he abandoned the artistic career pursued by other members of his gifted family and enlisted in the Dutch navy to fight in the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1665-7.  On 12 July 1667, just after the famous raid when the Dutch sailed up the River Medway and burned the English fleet at Chatham, Moses was involved in a minor skirmish at Harwich, where he was killed in action. He was buried on a nearby hillside. 

Amongst the most notable of his surviving drawings are a group of studies, in red or black chalk, which depict single figures, in many cases apparently young seamen who must have been Moses' shipmates.  Though slightly smaller in format than the other drawings in the group, this atmospheric study is stylistically comparable, and may well originate from the same putative sketchbook.  Almost all the known drawings by members of the Ter Borch family are today in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, having remained in the possession of the family until they were bequeathed to the museum with the entire studio estate in 1887.  These figure drawings by Moses, however, somehow left the possession of the family at an early date - perhaps during the artist's lifetime - and many, if not all, of them were sold from the collection of Count Franz von Sternberg-Manderscheid in Dresden in 1845.¹  Just over 20 figure studies belonging to this intriguing group of drawings are known today.²

1.  Sale Dresden, Frenzel, 10 November 1845, lots 759-777
2.  A. McNeil Kettering, Drawings from the Ter Borch Studio Estate, 2 vols., The Hague 1988, vol. I, pp. 287, 340-1, cat. no. M 105, vol. II, pp. 840-53, App. I, nos. 50-51, 53-60, 63-65, 71-75, 77, plus one more, sold, London, Sotheby's, 6 July 2005, lot 152