page_title: The Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1639
section_title: St. Jorisdoelen
hierarchical_section_title: The Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1639 / St. Jorisdoelen
caption_attribution_description: English: Hallway of rear entrance Proveniershof, Grote Houtstraat, Haarlem.
context_page_description: The Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1639 refers to the last and largest schutterstuk painted by Frans Hals for the St. George civic guard of Haarlem, and today is considered one of the main attractions of the Frans Hals Museum there.
  In this painting over 4 meters wide, nineteen men are portrayed, each wearing a sash in the color of his "rot", or brigade. All three brigades of the St George militia are represented, with their flag-bearers carrying flags in the colours orange, white or blue. These officers were selected by the council of Haarlem to serve for three years, and this group had just finished their tenure and celebrated their end of service with a portrait. The man with the commander's staff situated third from lower left with the orange sash and orange feather in his hat is the Colonel Johan Claesz Loo, who heads the militia. The other officers are carrying partisans with tassles, spontoons or halberds.
context_section_description: The painting previously hung with others in the old "St. Jorisdoelen" complex, known today as the Proveniershuis.  The paintings by Hals and others were once hung in the main hall of the complex in the Grote Houtstraat. The building in this painting has puzzled historians, because the St. Jorisdoelen do not look like this building. Instead, the building portrayed looks like Gemeenlandshuis Zwanenburg. In 1706, the colonel of the St. Jorisdoelen at that time was Pieter Schatter, who was also member of the board of the Hoogheemraadschap van Rijnland. According to the archives of the St. Jorisdoelen, he paid the painter Dirk Maas to "touch up" this painting, and this is the result, which looks very similar to his painting of the Huis Zwanenburg te Halfweg in 1702, which had been commissioned by Pieter Schatter for the Gemeenlandshuis van Rijnland in 1702. It is unknown why Schatter did this, though it was possibly meant to honor the Peace of Münster while paying hommage to another local artist, the architect Pieter Post. When Schatter paid for this "touch up", this painting may possibly have been moved there, though it was in the collection of the Haarlem City Hall by 1819.
  Today a hofje with the main hall used as a restaurant, the main buildings of the St Jorisdoelen were used for years as an inn, where the schutterstukken were tourist attractions. Possibly the size of this painting meant that some of them had to be moved to the narrow rear entrance, which is perhaps how some of them were damaged. Today all of the schutterstukken that once hung here have been transferred to the Frans Hals Museum.
caption: View of the rear entrance to the garden of the St. Jorisdoelen. Large paintings like this one may have pushed out others to be hung in this lowly corridor
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