Woman at a Mirror

Description

Gerard ter Borch made his reputation painting the quiet interiors of Dutch burgher life, where a soldier reads a letter or a mother tends a child by candlelight, and where the drama lies entirely in gesture and fabric rather than event. Much of his output turns on satin skirts and half-lit faces, on rooms so hushed they seem to hold their breath. Woman at a Mirror belongs to this world but narrows its attention further still, fixing on a single figure absorbed in her own reflection, and in doing so it strips away even the modest incident that animates his other domestic scenes.

About Woman at a Mirror

The composition is built from a small number of large, calm shapes: the dark mass of the mirror frame, the pale plane of a bodice or collar catching the light, the negative space of the room pressing in around the figure. Ter Borch arranges these elements with the same discipline he brought to his group portraits, so that scale and placement do the work usually left to narrative. There is no incident to explain, only the woman turned toward her own image, and the picture asks the viewer to slow down in the same way she has slowed down before the glass.

Colour and light are handled with the restraint typical of his mature period, greys and warm neutrals built up in thin, controlled layers so that the surface glows rather than shines. Weight is distributed carefully across the canvas: the head and mirror carry the focal interest, while passages of drapery and shadow recede without going slack. It is a picture that repays close looking, since the broad design and the smallest transitions of tone are never separated from one another, each supporting the other the longer one stays with it.

The hand-painted reproduction

Bringing this quiet economy of means back onto canvas is the real task of the reproduction, and it is why ByMuseum treats each order as an oil painting reproduction rather than a mechanical copy. A trained painter works by hand in oil on canvas, mixing the same muted greys and warm neutrals ter Borch favoured and building them up in comparable layers, so that the surface carries actual brushwork and a genuine depth of paint rather than a flat printed image. Matching the palette is only the beginning; the painter also has to recover the balance of light passages against darker ground that gives the original its stillness, working as an oil on canvas reproduction rather than any kind of print. The finished canvas keeps the tactile presence of oil paint, with ridges and thin passages you can see catch the light, so the object on the wall behaves like a painting rather than a copy of one.

• Hand-painted oil on canvas, worked by a trained artist rather than printed
• Available in multiple sizes to suit the wall it will hang on
• Gallery-ready presentation, finished for display on arrival
• Certificate of authenticity included with every order
• Free worldwide shipping, with no shipping charge to any country