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Gerard Terboch has left us some wonderful genre scenes of everyday Dutch 17th century life. Most our middle class scenes, but we notice some scenes of both the working-class and aristocrats. We do not notice a lot of children depicted in his scenes. Perhaps the best known is a painting of a boy picking fleas off his dog. We also note the painting here, "Lady at her Toilette" which includes a page boy. It was painted about 1660. This appears to be an aristocratic portrait that we do not fully understand the scene. We don't notice anything quite like it in Dutch genre paintings. This looks to us to be an aristocratic scene. The clothing seems more ostentatious of the middle class scenes that Dutch painters often depicted. It seems a bit strange to us that a page boy would assist in a lady's toilette. Perhaps it was not unusual in the 17th century, but it somewhat surprised us. Also the boy's attire does not seem right for the 17th century. By the 1660s, men and boys were wearing what looked increasingly like knee breeches. The boy here seems more dressed in 16th century styles before the development of knee breeches and modern pants. This could be because boys serving as pages wre dressed in older fashions, much as liveried servants. Again we are not entirely sure. Hopefully HBC readers will have some insights here. A reader writes, "The page boy is wearing a kind of dress like Louis XIV around 1660 to 1700. Just look at the king's portrait by Rigaud."
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