page_title: Merry company
section_title: Painters
hierarchical_section_title: Merry company / Painters
context_page_description: Merry company is the term in art history for a painting, usually from the 17th century, showing a small group of people enjoying themselves, usually seated with drinks, and often music-making. These scenes are a very common type of genre painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque; it is estimated that nearly two thirds of Dutch genre scenes show people drinking.
  The term is the usual translation of the Dutch geselschapje, or vrolijk gezelschap, and is capitalized when used as a title for a work, and sometimes as a term for the type. The scenes may be set in the home, a garden, or a tavern, and the gatherings range from decorous groups in wealthy interiors to groups of drunk men with prostitutes. Gatherings that are relatively decorous and expensively dressed, with similar numbers of men and women, often standing, may be called Elegant Company or Gallant Company, while those showing people who are clearly peasants are more likely to use that word in their title. Such subjects in painting are most common in Dutch art between about 1620 and 1670.
context_section_description: The first generation of Dutch painters included Willem Pieterszoon Buytewech (1591/1592–1624), who can claim to have invented the small interior merry company, Other early artists were David Vinckboons (1576–1629), and Esaias van de Velde (1587–1630), who was an even more significant pioneer of realistic landscape painting, in a completely different style to his elegant garden parties.  The famous portraitist Frans Hals was attributed with a single very early merry company, a gallant picnic of about 1610, which was destroyed in Berlin in World War II; he also painted a "close-up" genre depiction of three revellers.  His younger brother Dirck Hals (1591–1656) was a prolific specialist in small merry company groups.
  By about 1630 active painters included Hendrik Gerritsz. Pot (1587–1657), also a portraitist, Anthonie Palamedesz. (1601–1673), Pieter Codde (1599–1678), and Jacob Duck (1600–1667). Codde and Duck, with Willem Duyster, were also painters of "guardroom scenes", which showed soldiers specifically, and became popular in the 1630s; as Lucy van de Pol notes, the sailors who made up a great part of the clientele of taverns and brothels, at least in Amsterdam, are very rarely represented.  
  After about the mid-century many "company paintings" showed smaller and more quiet groups more firmly located in homes, often with more narrative elements and a greater concentration on effects of lighting and texture.  Pictures showing many of the same interests as "company" works, but just using couples or individuals become very common.  The paintings of Vermeer, none of which quite fall into the category of "merry company" works, exemplify this trend, which is also seen in those of Gerard ter Borch, Gabriel Metsu, Gerrit Dou, and Pieter de Hooch.  The works of Jan Steen (c. 1626–1679) maintained the tradition of rowdy drinking groups, but usually with a setting showing a specific occasion, or illustrating a proverb. Many show family groups, and often a self-portrait is included.  
  Flemish artists include David Vinckboons, who moved to the north as a young adult, Frans Francken II with his uncle Hieronymus I and brother Hieronymus II, Sebastian Vrancx, Louis de Caullery, all painting courtly scenes, often with small figures and much attention given to the architectural settings in or outside sumptuous palaces. Simon de Vos (1603–1676), painted smaller scenes closer to the Dutch style.
  The Bruegel tradition of peasant scenes was continued by his sons Jan Brueghel I and Peter Brueghel the Younger, mostly painting kermesse-type festivities with large numbers of figures, most often outdoors.  Smaller groups in interiors were pioneered by the intensely naturalistic Adriaen Brouwer, who was Flemish but also worked and sold in Haarlem in the north, where he greatly influenced Adriaen van Ostade, the leading Dutch painter of peasants.  Brouwer's sordid scenes are short on merriment, but van Ostade softened and sentimentalized his style.
  David Teniers the Elder, his son David Teniers the Younger as well as other members of the family included many peasant scenes in their large and varied output. Most of the works of all these painters lie outside the typical boundaries of the "merry company", in terms of the number of figures or their class, but many fall within; there was also a later generation of Flemish painters of peasant scenes.  Rubens, who owned 17 paintings by Adriaen Brouwer, painted a few kermesse and other peasant scenes that are highly successful, despite their very heroic style.  He also painted a few large courtly company scenes, including his Garden of Love, (Prado, 1634-5).
  Apart from Jordaens and Rubens, Flemish painters of monumental company scenes included Theodoor Rombouts (1597–1637), who made several large paintings of card-players, Cornelis de Vos, and Jan Cossiers.
caption: Peter Paul Rubens, Garden of Love, 1630–35, the apotheosis of the outdoor courtly company
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