Bakker die een kat in een oven gooit - Gesina ter Borch

A seventeenth-century illustration from the personal album of Dutch artist Gesina ter Borch, featuring calligraphic verse and a hand-painted scene.

This work originates from the personal album of Gesina ter Borch, a Dutch artist active during the seventeenth century. The page combines calligraphic verse with a small, hand-painted illustration. The text recounts a narrative involving a baker and a cat, written in a formal, elegant script that occupies the majority of the page. The illustration, positioned in the lower right corner, depicts a figure in period attire holding a cat towards the opening of an oven. The style is characteristic of the intimate, domestic nature of ter Borch's personal sketchbooks, which often blended literary interests with visual storytelling.

Gesina ter Borch was a member of a prominent artistic family in Zwolle. Her albums provide a window into the cultural life of the Dutch Golden Age, reflecting the pastimes and literary tastes of the period. The drawing is executed with a delicate hand, using muted tones that complement the ink-based text. The composition is sparse, prioritising the relationship between the written word and the visual narrative. The figure of the baker is rendered with simple, clear lines, typical of the illustrative traditions found in seventeenth-century Dutch manuscripts. This print captures the unique character of ter Borch's work, offering a glimpse into the private artistic practices of a woman who was both a collector and a creator of her own visual anthologies. The piece is a fine example of the intersection between poetry and illustration in the private collections of the era, preserved with the original ink annotations that define its historical context.