• Gerard ter Borch catalog raisonné, 1913, 87.2 
• Gerard ter Borch exhibition 2004/05, 40
• http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=5584804 
• RKDimages ID: 237376 

almost identical work by the artist in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, 67 x 54 cm, acquired from the collection of the Empress Josephine at Malmaison and once in the celebrated cabinet of the duc de Choiseul. The history of the Hermitage picture is complex. At some stage early in its existence it was expanded by the addition of strips of canvas to all four edges; in its enlarged state it measured 81.7 x 72 cm., as recorded in a 1742 sale catalogue and a 1771 engraving (fig. 2). The larger margins around Ter Borch's composition created by the additions were painted to include a chandelier, a window with a view to a landscape, a lap-dog on a footstool and a pet monkey on a ball-and-chain. Although the additions have since been removed from the Hermitage version, traces of the elements painted in remain on the original support. The Hermitage canvas appears to have been subsequently trimmed at the left edge, with a thin but significant strip of the background removed, cropping the picture plane to the extreme tip of the woman's fur-lined jacket, narrowing the width of the painting and shifting the balance of the composition slightly off-centre.

Ter Borch's step-sister Gesina, the model for the present work, compiled albums of poetry that explore her fascination with ideal Petrarchan love, a notion popular in Dutch writing, emblems and songs of this period. In 1659, Gesina also recorded her interest in colour symbolism, which Ter Borch occasionally adopted in his paintings. In this rubric, the colour yellow is associated with gladness and joy, thus further supporting a romantic interpretation of the present work. Moreover, in Ter Borch's time lemons were recommended as a cure for lovesickness, and were often included in contemporary scenes of distraught maidens. The theme of lovesickness and youthful courtship is explored with great sensitivity by Ter Borch. In his note for the Washington and Detroit exhibition, Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. notes the tender way in which the young man (modelled on Gesina's brother, Ter Borch's half-brother Moses) cups the stand of the glass in such a way that he can touch the young woman's little finger, pressing his skin to hers in a tentative, secret signal; while she, pale but lightly flushed with emotion, steadies her right arm almost unnoticeably with her left hand. Such subtle details combine to endow the picture with its full emotional and intellectual complexity, which impresses itself upon the viewer even before he has had the time to register them consciously.

Datable on the basis of the costumes to early-to-mid 1660s.