The Night Watch (야간 순찰)

[홀랜]

Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq,[1] also known as The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, but commonly referred to as The Night Watch (Dutch: De Nachtwacht), is a 1642 painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. It is in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum but is prominently displayed in the Rijksmuseum as the best-known painting in its collection. The Night Watch is one of the most famous Dutch Golden Age paintings. Rembrandt's large painting (363 by 437 centimetres (12 by 14+1⁄2 feet)) is famed for transforming a group portrait of a civic guard company into a compelling drama energized by light and shadow (tenebrism). The title is a misnomer; the painting does not depict a nocturnal scene.[2]

The Night Watch was completed in 1642 at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age. It depicts the eponymous company moving out, led by Captain Frans Banninck Cocq (dressed in black, with a red sash) and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch (dressed in yellow, with a white sash). Behind them, the company's colors are carried by the ensign, Jan Visscher Cornelissen. Rembrandt incorporated the traditional emblem of the arquebusiers in the figure of the young girl who carries a dead chicken on her belt, referencing the clauweniers (arquebusiers) and a type of drinking horn used at group banquets.[3]

History[edit]

Commission[edit]

The painting was commissioned around 1639 by Captain Banninck Cocq and seventeen members of his Kloveniers (civic militia guards).[4] Eighteen names appear on a shield, painted circa 1715, in the center-right background, as the hired drummer was added to the painting for free.[5] A total of 34 characters appear in the painting. Rembrandt was paid 1,600 guilders for the painting (each person paid one hundred), a large sum at the time. This was one of a series of seven similar paintings of the militiamen (Dutch: Schuttersstuk) commissioned during that time from various artists.[citation needed]

The painting was commissioned to hang in the banquet hall of the newly built Kloveniersdoelen (Musketeers' Meeting Hall) in Amsterdam. Some have suggested that the occasion for Rembrandt's commission and the series of other commissions given to other artists was the visit of the French queen, Marie de' Medici, in 1638. Even though she was escaping from her exile from France ordered by her son Louis XIII, the queen's arrival was met with great pageantry.[citation needed]

It is thought the painting was completed in a lean-to in Rembrandt's garden as it is too large to fit into his Amsterdam studio.

17th-century copy by Gerrit Lundens with lines added indicating the areas cut down from the original painting in 1715

Location and alterations[edit]

The Night Watch as it hung in the Trippenhuis in 1885, by August Jernberg

The Night Watch first hung in the Groote Zaal (Great Hall) of Amsterdam's Kloveniersdoelen. This structure currently houses the Doelen Hotel. In 1715, the painting was moved to the Amsterdam Town Hall, for which it was trimmed on all four sides. This was done, presumably, to fit the painting between two columns and was a common practice before the 19th century. This alteration resulted in the loss of two characters on the left side of the painting, the top of the arch, the balustrade, and the edge of the step. The missing portions have not been found; Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, has some hope that possibly at least the left-hand side might not have been destroyed as it contained three figures, and at the time the painting was trimmed Rembrandt paintings were already expensive.[6][7]

A 17th-century copy of the painting by Gerrit Lundens (1622–1683), on loan from the National Gallery, London, to the Rijkmuseum,[8] shows the original composition.[9]

When Napoleon occupied the Netherlands, the Town Hall became the Palace on the Dam and the magistrates moved the painting to the Trippenhuis of the family Trip. Napoleon ordered it returned, but after the occupation ended in 1813, the painting again moved to the Trippenhuis, which now housed the Dutch Academy of Sciences. It remained there until it moved to the new Rijksmuseum when its building was finished in 1885.[citation needed]

The painting was removed from the Rijksmuseum in September 1939, at the onset of World War II. The canvas was detached from its frame and rolled around a cylinder. The rolled painting was stored for four years in a special safe that was built to protect many works of art in the caves of Maastricht, Netherlands.[10] After the end of the war, the canvas was re-mounted, restored, and returned to the Rijksmuseum.[citation needed]

On 11 December 2003, The Night Watch was moved to a temporary location, due to a major refurbishment of the Rijksmuseum. The painting was detached from its frame, wrapped in stain-free paper, put into a wooden frame which was put into two sleeves, driven on a cart to its new destination, hoisted, and brought into its new home through a special slit.[citation needed]

While the refurbishment took place, The Night Watch could be viewed in its temporary location in the Philipsvleugel of the Rijksmuseum. When the refurbishment was finished in April 2013, the painting was returned to its original place in the Nachtwachtzaal (Room of the Night Watch).

In 2021, the painting was exhibited from June to September with the trimmed-off sections recreated using convolutional neural networks, an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm, based on the copy by Lundens.[11] The recreation corrected for perspective (Lundens must have been sitting on the left side of the painting when he made his copy), and used colors and brush-strokes as used by Rembrandt. The trimming of the painting put the lieutenants in the center, but the original placed them off-center, marching towards an empty space now reinstated, creating a dynamic of the troops marching towards the left of the painting. The cutdown painting by Rembrandt with the AI recreation of the missing portions attached was placed on exhibition for three months. The augmented painting will not be on permanent display so as not to "trick" viewers into thinking they were seeing the full original; the augmentations are a scientific, rather than an artist's, interpretation.

Artist	Rembrandt van Rijn
Year	1642
Medium	Oil on canvas
Movement	Baroque painting, Dutch Golden Age painting
Dimensions	363 cm × 437 cm (142.9 in × 172.0 in)
Location	Amsterdam Museum on permanent loan to Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands
Website	Amsterdam Collection online

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