page_title: Schutterij
section_title: Group portraits
hierarchical_section_title: Schutterij / Group portraits
caption_attribution_description: Frans Banning Cocq, heer van purmerlant en Ilpendam, Capiteijn Willem van Ruijtenburch van Vlaerdingen, heer van Vlaerdingen, Luijtenant, Jan Visscher Cornelisen Vaendrich, Rombout Kemp Sergeant, Reijnier Engelen Sergeant, Barent Harmansen, Jan Adriaensen Keyser, Elbert Willemsen, Musketier Jan Clasen Leydeckers (behind the Lieutenant in Yellow blowing into the powder pan of a musket which once belonged to Jan Snedeker), Jan Ockersen, Jan Pietersen bronchorst, Harman Iacobsen wormskerck, Jacob Dirksen de Roy (the Governor on far left of the cut off section of the painting), Jan vander heede, Walich Schellingwou, Jan brugman, Claes van Cruysbergen, Paulus Schoonhoven
context_page_description: Schutterij refers to a voluntary city guard or citizen militia in the medieval and early modern Netherlands, intended to protect the town or city from attack and act in case of revolt or fire. Their training grounds were often on open spaces within the city, near the city walls, but, when the weather did not allow, inside a church. They are mostly grouped according to their district and to the weapon that they used: bow, crossbow or gun. Together, its members are called a Schuttersgilde, which could be roughly translated as a "shooter's guild". It is now a title applied to ceremonial shooting clubs and to the country's Olympic rifle team.
context_section_description: After 1581, the schutterij were officially prohibited from influencing city politics, but since the ruling regenten were all members of these guilds, that was quite hard to do. Once a year they held a banquet, with beer and a roasted ox. Whenever a changeover of the leading officers occurred, a local painter was invited to paint the members, and the scene most popularly chosen for these group portraits was the banquet scene. Though occasionally they were shown outside in active duty, the members were usually portrayed for posterity dressed in their Sunday best, rather than their guard dress. These militia group portraits include some of the grandest portraiture in Dutch Golden Age painting.
  Group portraits were popular among the large numbers of civic associations that were a notable part of Dutch life, such as the officers of a city's schutterij or militia guards, boards of trustees and regents of guilds and charitable foundations and the like. Especially in the first half of the century, portraits were very formal and stiff in composition. Early examples showed them dining, with each person looking at the viewer.  Later groups showed most figures standing for a more dynamic composition.  Much attention was paid to fine details in clothing, and where applicable, to furniture and other signs of a person's position in society. Later in the century groups became livelier and colours brighter.  Rembrandt's Syndics of the Drapers' Guild is a subtle treatment of a group round a table.
  A similar commemorative group painting tradition, the Regents group portrait, was true for other Dutch guilds and institutions as well, such as orphanages, hospitals, and hofjes. In the case of the schutterijen, such a painting was known in Dutch as a schuttersstuk (pl. schuttersstukken). After the schutters agreed how they wanted to be depicted together in paint, for such paintings each member usually paid and posed separately so that each individual portrait within the group was as accurate as possible, and the artist's fee could be paid.  Most group portraits of militia guards were commissioned in Haarlem and Amsterdam, and were much more flamboyant and relaxed or even boisterous than other types of portraits, as well as much larger.  Rembrandt's famous The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, better known as The Night Watch (1642), was an ambitious and not entirely successful attempt to show a group in action, setting out for a patrol or parade and also innovative in avoiding the typical very wide format of such works.  The reason for this was probably that banquets for guilds had been banned in Amsterdam since 1522.
  Every member of the schutterij who wanted to be in the group portrait, paid the painter, depending on his position in the painting.  The cost of group portraits was usually shared by the subjects, often not equally. The amount paid might determine each person's place in the picture, either head to toe in full regalia in the foreground or face only in the back of the group. Sometimes all group members paid an equal sum, which was likely to lead to quarrels when some members gained a more prominent place in the picture than others.  According to local legend, the schutterij was unhappy with the result in The Night Watch: instead of a group of proud and orderly men, they alleged Rembrandt had not painted what he saw. Ernst van de Wetering declared in 2006 that The Night Watch "... in a certain sense fails ...  Rembrandt wanted to paint the chaos of figures walking through each other, yet also aim for an organised composition."
  Winning a commission for a schutterstuk was a highly competitive task, with young portrait painters competing with each other to impress members of the schutterij. Often it helped if the painter became a member of the schuttersgilde, and Frans Hals, Hendrik Gerritsz Pot, and Caesar van Everdingen were all members of schuttersgildes who won such commissions. The commission itself was a guaranteed income for a year, but often the painter would win additional commissions to do the rest of the sitter's 
caption: Rembrandt's The Night Watch shows a schutterij moving out.
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