Portrait of a Woman, Possibly a Member of the van Citters Family

A woman in the low-cut silk gown and pearl jewellery of fashionable late-seventeenth-century society is shown half-length against a muted interior, a soft light falling on face and lace. Caspar Netscher, a pupil of Gerrit ter Borch, painted this refined portrait in 1674, in the final decade of a career spent in The Hague as one of the most sought-after portraitists among the Dutch ruling class. The smooth finish, the delicate handling of satin and lace, and the quiet elegance of the sitter are the qualities that made his small, jewel-like portraits prized above all for their glamour and restraint.