Staand paard, van achteren c. 1658 - 1659

Moses ter Borch made this drawing of a horse, seen from behind, with graphite on paper in the Netherlands sometime in the mid-17th century. Ter Borch, who died young, was from a family of artists in the Northern Netherlands. The Dutch Golden Age was in full swing. It was a time when the Netherlands dominated global commerce. But art was also being revolutionized. Artists were breaking away from the patronage of the church and royalty. The art market was driven by the tastes of a rising merchant class who wanted genre painting, landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. This drawing on the other hand, of what appears to be the rear of a working animal, seems somehow outside that framework. What was Ter Borch trying to tell us about the animals that underpinned the Dutch economy? These are the kinds of questions we can investigate with the aid of historical research.