  About the Artwork
  
  
  This sumptuous picture, depicting in vivid detail the opulent furnishings and costumes of a late-seventeenth-century Dutch household, perhaps holds a hidden message. The elegant woman in a blue-and-white satin dress stands before a boudoir table loaded with expensive accessories: a gilt-framed mirror, a candelabra, a silver-gilt basin, and an oval silver brush box. She is attended not only by the maidservant who laces up her bodice, but also by a liveried page who carries a clean towel for his mistress. He wears a costly uniform, complete with vibrant red rosettes at the knees. While the eye is immediately drawn to the play of light on shimmering surfaces, the central figure’s abstracted and melancholic expression invites a deeper reading. Her thoughts seem far from the luxury around her, as she plays pensively with the ring on her finger. It may be that the artist Gerard ter Borch intended the composition to serve as a vanitas, a genre of painting exploring the futility of worldly riches.
  
  
  Title
  Lady at Her Toilette
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1660
  
  Artist
  Gerard ter Borch
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1617-1681
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  Dutch
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 30 × 23 1/2 inches (76.2 × 59.7 cm)
  Framed: 44 × 37 5/8 × 3 1/4 inches (111.8 × 95.6 × 8.3 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  European Painting
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Eleanor Clay Ford Fund, General Membership Fund, Endowment Income Fund and Special Activities Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  65.10
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
