Mother Delousing her Child’s Hair

Ter Borch utilizes a restrained chiaroscuro, allowing a dark backdrop to amplify the illuminated faces and hands. His brushwork is delicate, rendering the textures of fabric and hair with subtle gradations. The careful modeling of light creates a sense of depth while maintaining the calm atmosphere typical of mid‑seventeenth‑century Dutch genre painting.

Created during the height of the Dutch Golden Age, the painting exemplifies ter Borch’s focus on interior genre scenes. It entered public collections in the nineteenth century, later becoming part of a European museum’s holdings, where it remains a reference for studies of domestic life and the artist’s influence on contemporaries such as Vermeer and Metsu.