Another Susteren portrait, this time perhaps by Gerard ter Borch

DVC, from Belgium, sells on 29 September 2018 an "attributed to Gerard ter Borch" miniature (8 by 7 cm) portrait of Abraham van Susteren, estimated at 1,500 to 3,000 Euro.

Nothing remarkable (well, a miniature by Ter Borch is remarkable enough, but nothing I would normally spend blog space on), but this caught my attention as I have posted about a portrait of the same sitter (and one of his wife) in May of this year already. I guess some descendant is slowly cleaning out the old stuff from their house... I have described what we know about Van Susteren at length in that post, so I'll not repeat it here.

This portrait clearly shows the same man, but at a younger age, which fits with my lengthy analysis of the date of that other work. This one was painted when he was still in the Netherlands, i.e. before 1665. Abraham van Susteren was born in 1628, so the painting is probably from the 1650s.

Whether it is by Ter Borch is hard to determine, he certainly has made better miniature portraits but some others are of comparable quality, and the artist who created this one clearly had considerable talent. And on the other hand Van Susteren clearly had the wealth to pay for a good artist. The estimate for this miniature seems a bit conservative.