Gerard ter Borch: Gallant Conversation; known as 'The Paternal Admonition' (c. 1654)

This magnificent work by Gerard ter Borch (1617-1681) was, until recently, titled ‘Paternal admonition’. The idea was that the daughter, the girl in the delicately painted satin dress we are looking at from behind, receives a moral comment from her father, the man in soldier costume who raises his hand to emphasize his point. His wife next to him looks introverted into her glass of wine.
In fact, there’s no real basis for that interpretation. The main problem with it is that the man is way too young to be her father. Therefore, the theory was replaced by another one: Ter Borch depicted a brothel scene in which the woman seen on the back is a prostitute, the other woman the procuress and the soldier a customer who’s holding up a coin to pay for her services. This proposal seems to be more likely, also because the whole atmosphere and décor of the scene (mirror, dog, prominently large bed) remind us of similar genre pieces with the same subject. Nevertheless, interpretation problems remain, not in the last place because the soldier’s coin is not (clearly) visible.
Even in his own days, Gerard ter Borch was already known for the ambiguous meaning of his paintings and he’d probably been amused to see 21st century art historians still quarreling about their meaning.