The support is an oak panel, consisting of two horizontally grained planks, which has been cradled. The panel is bevelled on the right and on the left (the other edges are not visible because of the cradling). Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1601. The panel could have been ready for use by 1616, but a date in or after 1618 is more likely. The ground layer, which is probably light-coloured, was applied with bold brushstrokes. The composition was sketched on the ground with a brush in brown, partly visible to the naked eye, in a medium that could not be detected with infrared reflectography. Several changes can be seen in the outlines of the figures, for instance of the fiddler in the centre, whose bow was moved twice. The paint was applied thickly in the foreground, whereas the figures in the background are painted transparently.

Fair. The paint layers are considerably abraded and the paint has become transparent. There is a horizontal crack 30 cm long at the left, just above the join. The varnish has discoloured and is matte in the retouched areas.

…; collection Jonkheer Mr Jan Karel Jacob de Jonge (1828-80), The Hague;¹¹Havard II, 1880, p. 52. his wife, dowager of J.K.J. de Jonge, née De Kock, The Hague; from her son, Jonkheer Mr A.H.W. de Jonge, fl. 2,000, to the museum, through the mediation of the Vereniging Rembrandt, 1900

Object number: SK-A-1906

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Vereniging Rembrandt

Palamedesz painted several merry companies between 1632 and 1634 that are related to this one, such as those in Helsinki and The Hague of 1632, and the painting dated 1634 in Vienna.³³Atheneum; illustrated in Poznan 2002, pp. 36-38; Mauritshuis; illustrated in New York-London 2001, pp. 319-20; Kunsthistorisches Museum; illustrated in coll. cat. Vienna 1991, pl. 515. See also the work dated 1633 that was with the art dealer Johnny van Haeften, London, in 1997; illustrated in Briels 1997, p. 95, fig. 128. All display the stylistic influence of Haarlem and Amsterdam artists like Pieter Codde, Dirck Hals, Willem Duyster and Hendrick Pot. Palamedesz’s subject matter, however, has more in common with that of Esaias van de Velde, for while the first group of artists quite often painted tavern and brothel scenes, Palamedesz concentrated mainly on the refined pleasures of the elite.⁴⁴Kolfin 2005, p. 112.

The painting in the Rijksmuseum is particularly close to the merry company in The Hague.⁵⁵That work, wrongly identified as a pendant of the Amsterdam painting in Havard II, 1880, p. 52, does come from the same 19th-century collection. Both works show elegantly dressed figures in a light and quite plainly furnished room. The men and women are grouped around a table in the right half of the composition, and are drinking, making music and playing a board-game, probably tric-trac. One characteristic element is the central figure gazing out at the viewer, who is mirrored in the Rijksmuseum painting by the woman holding a glass. The servant pouring wine on the far left, who reappears time and again in different poses and positions in Palamedesz’s oeuvre until the very end of his career, is almost identical in both works. One striking detail in the Rijksmuseum painting is the sword lying on the floor.

The symbolic meaning of Palamedesz’s merry companies is the subject of discussion. Sutton proposed that the servant pouring wine might stand for Temperance, while Rüger suggested that the stormy sea and the rocky landscape in the paintings in the background might allude to the deprivations the virtuous have to endure, but both authors’ interpretations are tentative.⁶⁶Sutton in Philadelphia etc. 1984, p. 293; Rüger in New York-London 2001, p. 320; see also De Jongh in Amsterdam 1997, p. 176, for the paintings in the backgrounds of 17th-century genre scenes such as Palamedesz’s. According to Briels, the scenes should be interpreted as warnings against sensual pleasure.⁷⁷Briels 1987, pp. 95-115, esp. p. 111. However, there do not seem to be any explicit references to drunkenness or lascivious behaviour in the form of innkeepers or bawds in Palamedesz’s works.⁸⁸Kolfin 2005, p. 112.

One complicating factor is that Palamedesz mixed different genres together. He also painted real families as merry companies, and the distinction is not always clear.⁹⁹See, for instance, the painting in Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum; other examples are given in Kolfin 2005, pp. 113-14, 269, note 79, and in Laarman 2002, pp. 68-69, who believes that the central figures in the Helsinki painting are portraits. Kolfin rightly argues that it is unlikely that patrons would deliberately have allowed themselves and their families to be portrayed in a context that was associated with loose living.¹⁰¹⁰Kolfin 2005, pp. 113-14.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 226.

Havard II, 1880, pp. 37, 51-52

1903, p. 204, no. 1834; 1934, p. 218, no. 1834; 1960, p. 237, no. 1834; 1976, p. 434, no. A 1906; 2007, no. 226

G. Wuestman, 2007, 'Anthonie Palamedesz., Merry Company in a Room, 1633', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20025976