Support The plain-weave canvas, with an average of approx. 18 by 15.5 threads per centimetre, has been wax-resin lined. All tacking edges have been preserved. Deep, wide cusping at intervals with a range of 17-20 cm, which is probably related to the initial stretching for priming, is present at the top. Shallow cusping at intervals of approx. 8-9 cm is present at the bottom and on the left and right. Judging by the crack pattern parallel to the edges, the bars of the original strainer were 4-4.5 cm wide.
Preparatory layers The single, warm ochre-coloured ground extends over the tacking edges.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the tacking edges. The composition appears to have been constructed over fluid, thick, dark contour lines which are occasionally perceptible under the lighter colours, for instance in the sleeves and skirt of the satin dress. The painting was built up from the back to the front and from dark to light, consistently using reserves, also within the figures. The flesh tones were softly blended with deft, wet-in-wet strokes. In general, the colour transitions were carefully closed, although the ground and dark contour lines were left visible at the underside of the man’s right sleeve and the standing woman’s neck. The grain of the floorboards was painted with fine lines, contrasting with the less defined, opaque strokes in the rest of the composition. The reserve for the bed, for instance, was narrower than the painted version by approx. 1.5 cm and 4 cm on the left and right respectively, the seated woman’s forefinger was higher and her middle finger shorter, as were the dog’s hindquarters. Infrared reflectography revealed a slightly different initial position of the legs of the man’s chair and of the sword, which was closer to his left ankle. The shoulder cape of the standing woman was not left in reserve, since her right sleeve was painted completely up to her shoulder at first, as is very faintly visible in the X-radiograph.
Gwen Tauber [publication date 2026]

A. Wallert, ‘The Miracle of Gerard ter Borch’s Satin’, in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, pp. 32-41, esp. pp. 37-38

Fair. Previous cleaning and lining interventions have increased the blurred appearance of the painting and the pebbled texture of its surface. The paint is abraded throughout, particularly in the forehead of the seated woman. Pronounced craquelure is visible throughout.

…; ? from the dealer Jacques de Roore (1686-1747), The Hague, fl. 450, to Willem Lormier (1682-1758), The Hague;¹¹Catalogus van schilderyen van den Heer Agent Willem Lormier, in ’s Hage, The Hague 1752, p. 28, no. 295; copy RKD. his collection, Amsterdam, 1752 (‘Een staande Vrouw in ’t Wit Satyn, en een sittende Man en Vrouw met een Wynglas aan de mond, br. 2 v. 3 en drie vierde d., h. 2 v. 3 d. [72.6 x 70.6 cm] D[oek]’);²²Catalogus van schilderyen van den Heer Agent Willem Lormier, in ’s Hage, The Hague 1752, p. 28, no. 295; copy RKD. his sale, The Hague (A. Franken), 4 July 1763, no. 284 (‘Een staande Vrouw in ’t Wit Satyn, en een sittende Man en Vrouw met een Wynglas aan de mond, br. 2 v. 3 en drie vierde d., h. 2 v. 3 d. [72.6 x 70.6 cm] D[oek]’), fl. 825, to Adriaan Leonard van Heteren (1724-1800), The Hague;³³Copy RKD. recorded in his collection, The Hague, 1771, August 1781;⁴⁴W. Tischbein, Aus meinem Leben, ed. L. Brieger, Berlin 1922 (ed. princ. Braunschweig 1861), p. 96, ‘[…] und Terburg’; J. Reynolds, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, ed. H. Mount, Cambridge 1996 (ed. princ. London 1797), p. 91, ‘A FIGURE in white sattin, by Terburgh.’ his third cousin and godson, Adriaan Leonard van Heteren Gevers (1794-1866), Rotterdam (‘Terborg. Ce tableau représente un père et une mère qui paraissent donner des instructions à leur fille qui est habillée en satin blanc; on y voit beaucoup d’autres accessoires (toile, h. 27 l. 27¾) [70.6 x 72.6 cm]’);⁵⁵Catalogue raisonné d’une collection de tableaux appartenant à Monsieur A.L. Gevers, Page de Leurs Majestés le Roi et la Reine de Hollande 1808; transcr. in E.W. Moes and E. van Biema, De Nationale Konst-Gallery en het Koninklijk Museum, Amsterdam 1909, pp. 145-51, esp. p. 150, no. 114. from whom, with 136 other paintings (known as ‘Kabinet van Heteren Gevers’), fl. 100,000, to the museum, by decree of Louis Napoleon, King of Holland, and through the mediation of his father Dirk Cornelis Gevers (1763-1839), 8 June 1809⁶⁶T.L.J. Verroen, ‘‘Een verstandig ryk man’: De achttiende-eeuwse verzamelaar Adriaan Leonard van Heteren’, Leids Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 4 (1985), pp. 17-61, esp. p. 17, notes 2, 3; E. Korthals Altes, ‘Philips van Dijk, een achttiende-eeuwse Haagse schilder-kunsthandelaar met een lokale en internationale clientèle’, Oud Holland 116 (2003), pp. 34-56, esp. p. 53, note 7.

Object number: SK-A-404

This painting by Gerard ter Borch owes its traditional title The Paternal Admonition to an inscription on the engraving Instruction Paternelle which Johann Georg Wille made after a second version in Berlin in 1765 (fig. a).¹⁴¹⁴A third version attributed to Ter Borch, which is known as A Singing Practice, is in Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery; illustrated in J.L. Williams (ed.), The National Gallery of Scotland: Concise Catalogue of Paintings, coll. cat. Edinburgh 1997, p. 41. This kind of anecdotal interpretation was long-lived, particularly after Goethe also described the picture in Die Wahlverwandtschaften of 1809 as a father admonishing his daughter.¹⁵¹⁵J.W. von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, ed. P. Reclam, Leipzig c. 1910 (ed. princ. Tübingen 1809), p. 115. It later attracted all kinds of other readings.

It has been taken for a brothel scene masked by a veil of Dutch bourgeois prudishness.¹⁶¹⁶W. Drost, Barockmalerei in den germanischen Ländern, Potsdam 1926, p. 187. The man on the right, whose paternal feelings have long been called into doubt, is identified as a military man by his buff coat. It has been suggested that the officer’s gesture, which is often found in brothel scenes, could have sexual implications.¹⁷¹⁷Some authors have argued that he must have been holding a coin which has since disappeared as a result of wear or restoration; see K. Voll (intro.), Die Meisterwerke des Rijks-Museum zu Amsterdam: 208 Kunstdrucke nach den Originalgemälden, Munich 1903, p. IX; E. Plietzsch, Gerard ter Borch, Vienna 1944, pp. 28, 29; S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, p. 97. However, not a trace of a coin was found during the painting’s technical examination. On this see also McNeil Kettering in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, pp. 114-15, who points out that there is no sign of a coin in the Berlin version either. Ter Borch also showed the thumb and index finger touching in the same way in his Suitor’s Visit of around 1658, where it was given an erotic connotation.¹⁸¹⁸Washington, National Gallery of Art; see McNeil Kettering in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, p. 124 (ill.). The combination of a young woman, an old one (often in the role of a procuress), a man and a bed is typical of brothel scenes. It is these traditional elements that indicate that here Ter Borch has painted a polite depiction of an erotic encounter.

Another reading sees a connection with seventeenth-century courtship rituals, which were related to contemporary Petrarchan love poetry about the burning desire for an adored but unattainable woman. This would make the man in the painting a suitor, the lady in satin the object of his ardour, and the old woman in black her chaperone.¹⁹¹⁹A. McNeil Kettering, ‘Ter Borch’s Ladies in Satin’, Art History 16 (1993), pp. 95-124, esp. p. 107. In this interpretation the bed is not a reference to paid sex but to a future marriage. In addition to the possible symbolic connotations of the bedstead, it was an expensive piece of furniture found in the reception rooms on the first floor of houses in the seventeenth century.²⁰²⁰J. Pijzel-Dommisse, Het Hollandse pronkpoppenhuis: Interieur en huishouden in de 17de en 18de eeuw, Zwolle 2000, p. 112. The fashionable chair upholstered in red, with the matching tabouret on the left, and the silver bowl and candlestick on the table were luxury items in a domestic interior. Ter Borch would have inserted these pieces of furniture and attributes in order to give the setting the same distinguished appeal as the graceful young woman.

It has been suggested, more with an eye to the form than the content, that the real importance of the painting lies not in the moral admonition inherent in a brothel scene but in the artistic qualities of Ter Borch’s virtuoso imitation of textures, seen above all in his phenomenal rendering of satin.²¹²¹L.A. Stone-Ferrier, Images of Textiles: The Weave of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Society, Ann Arbor 1985, p. 176. On the pictorial importance of Ter Borch’s satin see also E. van de Wetering, ‘Het satijn van Gerard Ter Borch’, Kunstschrift 37 (1993), no. 6, pp. 28-37, esp. pp. 29-35. The scarce early sources say nothing about the possible meanings of Ter Borch’s genre pieces but always stress his mastery of textures.²²²²S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, pp. 3-4.

Although there is very little information about the contemporary reception of Ter Borch’s art, he seems to have pursued a deliberate strategy of conjuring up different interpretations. Form, the tour de force of imitated textures, and content are not mutually exclusive. A seventeenth-century viewer could have recognized The Paternal Admonition as both a brothel scene and an innocent piece of courtship, or as an everyday gallant conversation. This ambiguity and openness to multiple readings is often described as one of the essential features of Ter Borch’s genre paintings from the 1650s and ’60s.²³²³See, for example, J.P. Guépin, ‘De rug zonder ommezijde’, in H.R. Hoetink et al., Gerard Ter Borch: Zwolle 1617-Deventer 1681, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis)/Münster (Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte) 1974, pp. 31-41; P.C. Sutton, ‘Masters of Dutch Genre Painting’, in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exh. cat. Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art)/Berlin (Gemäldegalerie)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 1984, pp. XIII-LXVI, esp. p. XIV; A. McNeil Kettering, ‘Ter Borch’s Ladies in Satin’, Art History 16 (1993), pp. 95-124; McNeil Kettering in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, p. 116. W.E. Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, New Haven/London 2004, p. 146, speaks of the ‘deliberate vagueness of its subject matter’. The figure seen from the back, which is a leitmotiv in Ter Borch’s oeuvre,²⁴²⁴S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, p. 13. See also F. Yalçin, Anwesende Abwesenheit: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklungsgeschichte von Bildern mit menschenleeren Räumen, Rückenfiguren und Lauschern im Holland des 17. Jahrhunderts, Munich 2004, pp. 114-23, 131. makes a particularly important contribution to this effect. Ter Borch was a master at placing layer upon layer of meaning, but that is regarded as a general tendency in seventeenth-century genre scenes²⁵²⁵W.E. Franits, Dutch Seventeenth-Century Genre Painting: Its Stylistic and Thematic Evolution, New Haven/London 2004, pp. 1-2, 138-39. and is found in the work of artists such as Jacob Duck²⁶²⁶N. Salomon, Jacob Duck and the Gentrification of Dutch Genre Painting, Doornspijk 1998, p. 106. and Johannes Vermeer.

The Rijksmuseum picture was one of the first that Ter Borch executed after settling in Deventer in 1654.²⁷²⁷S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, p. 96. Its likely date is around 1654-55, because Caspar Netscher made a copy after the Berlin version in 1655.²⁸²⁸M. Wieseman, Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting, Doornspijk 2002, p. 167. So far it has generally been assumed that the latter work was painted slightly later than the present one, because its figures are less successful and there are more pentimenti in the Rijksmuseum scene.²⁹²⁹See S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, p. 98; ibid., II, p. 116, no. 110; McNeil Kettering in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, p. 114. See Kelch in P.C. Sutton et al., Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exh. cat. Philadelphia (Philadelphia Museum of Art)/Berlin (Gemäldegalerie)/London (Royal Academy of Arts) 1984, p. 145, note 9, for a more positive assessment of the Berlin painting, and A. Wallert and G. Tauber, ‘Over herhalingen in de schilderkunst: Het probleem van reproductie’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 52 (2004), pp. 316-27, esp. pp. 319-20, fig. 2, for the use of working drawings for copying figures. It is usually assumed that pentimenti denote a prototype, because when making a repetition an artist had a model and was less likely to depart from it. However, one could counter this assumption by citing Ter Borch’s virtually identical versions of The Music Lesson of around 1668-69 and 1675, where there are pentimenti in the later, dated painting.³⁰³⁰See Wieseman in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, p. 172, note 5. Buckinghamshire, Waddesdon Manor, Ferdinand de Rothschild Collection (National Trust), and Toledo Museum of Art; illustrated in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, pp. 172-73. In addition, it has not yet been recorded in the literature on the Rijksmuseum picture that the artist had made a reserve for the bedstead approximately 5.5 centimetres narrower than the painted version.³¹³¹See Technical notes. The dark background now shows through on either side of that red passage. The originally smaller bed matches the one in Berlin, which means that at first he was following that composition. Ter Borch modified his initial design, perhaps because he was dissatisfied with the width of the bed relative to the width of the canvas.

As further support for the idea that the Berlin picture is the prototype it is worth mentioning that Ter Borch almost invariably used vertical formats for his genre scenes in this period, so it is not surprising that in this case too he first painted a vertical version and then opted for an oblong support as an alternative. An enlargement of the composition in the replica would not be unique in his oeuvre either, as shown by two other versions of a gallant conversation.³²³²Paris, Petit Palais, and Staatliches Museum Schwerin; illustrated in S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, pp. 270-71, nos. 112 II, 112 I. There is also Netscher’s free copy, which is dated 1655 and must have originated in Ter Borch’s studio under the master’s watchful eye. The fact that he took the Berlin picture as his model could be an indication that the Rijksmuseum painting was not yet finished, or that the replica was the preferred one and was regarded as the prototype in the studio. In any event, it is known from the many early copies, imitations and pastiches that the Berlin picture was the most popular one.³³³³Cf. S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, II, The Hague 1960, pp. 116-20, nos. 110 I a-c, 110 II a-w.

The Rijksmuseum version has suffered greatly from overpainting and restoration. In a photograph that was probably taken around 1890-1900 the bedstead is narrower than it is at present.³⁴³⁴Thus published in K. Voll (intro.), Die Meisterwerke des Rijks-Museum zu Amsterdam: 208 Kunstdrucke nach den Originalgemälden, Munich 1903, p. 28; F. Hannema, Gerard Terborch, Amsterdam 1943, facing p. 42. A drawing that Josef Danhauser made on a visit to the museum in 1842 shows that the bed was already less wide by then.³⁵³⁵Published in M. Poch-Kalous, ‘Josef Danhausers Reiseskizzenbuch in der Albertina: Deutschland, Holland, Belgien’, Albertina Studien 4 (1966), no. 1, pp. 18-39, esp. p. 27. He also placed the door further to the left behind the soldier, but that could be a modification made by Danhauser. The statement in the museum’s collection catalogue of 1843 that the background was ‘completely overpainted’ may have been a reference to this intervention.³⁶³⁶C. Apostool, Aanwijzing der schilderijen, berustende op ’s Rijks Museum te Amsterdam, coll. cat. Amsterdam 1843, p. 60, no. 314. An unknown restorer had evidently allowed himself to be misled by Ter Borch’s autograph revision, thus returning the passage to the artist’s initial design. It is not documented when that fallacy was corrected.

Gerbrand Korevaar [publication date 2026]

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

F. Hannema, Gerard Terborch, Amsterdam 1943, pp. 86-89; E. Plietzsch, Gerard ter Borch, Vienna 1944, pp. 21, 45, no. 49; S.J. Gudlaugsson, Geraert Ter Borch, I, The Hague 1959, pp. 96-98; ibid., II, 1960, p. 116, no. 110; H.R. Hoetink et al., Gerard Ter Borch: Zwolle 1617-Deventer 1681, exh. cat. The Hague (Mauritshuis)/Münster (Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte) 1974, pp. 126-27, no. 32; McNeil Kettering in A.K. Wheelock Jr et al., Gerard ter Borch, exh. cat. Washington (National Gallery of Art)/Detroit (Detroit Institute of Arts) 2004-05, pp. 114-16, no. 27, with earlier literature; C. Brusati, ‘Paintings at the Threshold: Competition and Conversation in Perspective’, in A.W.A. Boschloo (ed.), Aemulatio: Imitation, Emulation and Invention in Netherlandisch Art from 1500 to 1800: Essays in Honor of Eric Jan Sluijter, Zwolle 2011, pp. 326-41, esp. pp. 328, 330-32

1809, p. 71, no. 304; 1843, p. 60, no. 314 (‘the fluency of the outlines has been lost due to cleaning and flattening; the background completely overpainted’); 1853, p. 27, no. 277 (fl. 15,000); 1858, p. 140, no. 308 (as The Paternal Admonition); 1880, p. 302, no. 354 (as The Paternal Admonition); 1887, p. 166, no. 1413 (as The Paternal Admonition); 1903, p. 57, no. 570 (as The Paternal Admonition); 1934, p. 55, no. 570 (as The Paternal Admonition); 1960, pp. 47-48, no. 570; 1976, p. 131, no. A 404

Gerbrand Korevaar, 2026, 'Gerard ter (II) Borch, Three Figures Conversing in an Interior, known as ‘The Paternal Admonition’, c. 1654 - c. 1655', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200108277