Elegant Couples on a Terrace

The support, a plain-weave canvas, has been lined. Cusping is visible on all sides. The ground is white, followed by paint layers which were applied smoothly for the background and thickly for the figures. There is a pentimento in the hat of the man on the right.

Fair. Some areas of the painting are abraded and transparent.

...; sale, Johan van der Linden van Slingelandt (1701-82), Dordrecht, 22 August 1785, no. 167, as Frans Hals (‘op doek, hoog 22, breet 27 duim [56.5 x 69 cm]. In een Tuingezicht voor een Huis, ziet men ter linkerzijde een Heer, zittende op een steenen bank, en daar Neevens een bevallige vrouw, ter rechter zijde staat een ander jong heer, en aan zyn zyde een jonge Dame. Het is waarschijnlijk een Familie, de Persoonen die hier in voorkomen, zyn zeer kostelyk geschilderd volgens de dragt van dien tyd, en schynen lieden van den eersten rang te zyn; men kan dit Stuk met regt voor een der beste en uitvoerigste van deezen Meester houden’), fl. 125, to Delfos;¹¹Copy RKD....; private collection or art dealer, Paris;²²Haverkamp Begemann 1959, p. 64....; from the art dealer Nicolaas Beets, Amsterdam, fl. 10,000, to the museum, as a gift from the Fotocommissie, 1926

ObjectNumber: SK-A-3038

Credit line: Purchased with the support of the Commissie voor Fotoverkoop

With this painting of two fashionable couples beside a fountain, Willem Buytewech made a major contribution to the iconographic and stylistic evolution of genre paintings.⁵⁵Franits 2004, pp. 27-31. It is undated, but was probably made around 1616-20.⁶⁶Cf. Haverkamp Begemann 1959, p. 67. The colourful, in parts dashingly executed scene is set outdoors, like most early Haarlem paintings of merry companies. The composition is simple compared to Buytewech’s later interior scenes. The couples are dressed in the fashions of the 1610s, the men wearing slashed doublets, wide breeches and tall hats, the women gowns of brocade, satin and velvet, and lace ruffs.

The precise meaning of this scene was not clear until recently. It is obviously amorous in nature, and is in the Garden of Love tradition,⁷⁷Cf. Amsterdam 1976, pp. 65-66. and Pieter van Thiel has now come up with an ingenious solution.⁸⁸Van Thiel 2006. He rejects Six’s suggestion that this is a depiction of an amorous game.⁹⁹Six 1926, pp. 97-100. Instead he postulates that the barred window is a reference to Chapter 7 of Proverbs, where it is related that wisdom looked out of the barred window of his house and saw how an adulterous woman seduced ‘a young man void of understanding’ with sweet words, who then went to perdition ‘as an ox goeth to the slaughter’. The story urges lovers to be wise and sensible so as to avoid the young man’s fate. The seated woman clad in deep purple in Buytewech’s painting is the femme fatale. She is proffering rose petals to the young man on the left, symbols of her sweet, seductive words. He does not respond to her advances but strokes his dog, which stands for ‘the righteous teacher’, the loyal guide who keeps his master on the straight and narrow. The courtesan and her lover on the right side of the painting have not the slightest intention of picking up the bridal gloves lying at their feet.¹⁰¹⁰Du Mortier 1984, pp. 195-96; Van Thiel 2006.

Van Thiel follows De Jongh in regarding the spider’s web beneath the coat of arms on the window as a reference to Emblem 39 in the first edition of Jacob Cats’s Sinne- en minnebeelden. That emblem not only warns against getting trapped by ‘Venus’ entangling net’, but the Latin motto (‘Non intrandum, aut penetrandum’, or ‘Either stay outside or go right through’) also advises the reader not to embark on something unless one is sure of success.¹¹¹¹Cats 1618, pp. 78-79; De Jongh 1967, pp. 25-26; Amsterdam 1976, p. 66; Van Thiel 2006.

Attempts have been made in the past to identify the coat of arms on the grille in front of the window. According to Bijleveld it looks like that of Van Duyvelandt van Rhoon quartered with Van Rossum, while the greyhound with a three-leafed twig in its mouth is derived from the Van Rhoon crest.¹²¹²Bijleveld 1926, cols. 144-46. Although this dog does fulfill an important function in the moral connotation of the scene, the genealogical problem of the dog and coat of arms has still not been resolved.

Van Thiel dates the painting after 1618 on the evidence of the use of Cats’s emblem, that is to say in Buytewech’s Rotterdam period.

Everhard Korthals Altes, 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. 41.

Six 1926, pp. 97-100; Haverkamp Begemann 1959, pp. 28, 64-67, no. IV; Rotterdam-Paris 1974, pp. 3-5, no. 1; Amsterdam 1976, pp. 64-67, no. 10; Von Bogendorf Rupprath in Haarlem-Hamburg 2003, pp. 74-77, no. 5; Kolfin 2005, p. 153; Van Thiel 2006

1934, p. 68, no. 668c; 1960, p. 65, no. 668 B 1; 1976, p. 159, no. A 3038; 2007, no. 41

E. Korthals Altes, 2007, 'Willem Pietersz. Buytewech, Elegant Couples on a Terrace, c. 1616 - c. 1620', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8106