Rembrandt: The Night Watch

The Night Watch (Dutch: De Nachtwacht) is a painting by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn.
The painting was completed in 1642 and belongs to the Holland group portraits of shooting guilds. Today it is exhibited in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The painting is known best as Night Watch or Nightwatch, but several other names are known and used: “The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch”, Dutch:”De compagnie van Frans Banning Cocq”. In the family album of Captain Cocq the picture is titled “The captain gave his lieutenant the order to march with the militia”.

The Night Watch shows 34 people – including 18 shooters and 16 other figures. The foreground shows the captain and his lieutenant, but the overall screen layout is dominated by two figures in brightly lit yellow clothing: A girl in the middle ground and the lieutenant in the foreground.

The painting is very dark; some details in the background can hardly be recognized. The usual explanation is that over time the many layers of varnish have darkened naturally. But maybe, some conservators added later, during the 17th or 18th Century an additional yellow-brown varnish to achieve a so called “gallery tone”. However, if we judge after a later copy (cf. image 2) of “Night Watch” we can conclude that the painting had been much lighter, initially.

The center of The Night Watch shows a militia of the 17th Century. As the Netherlands struggled at those times to gain independence from the Spanish crown, there were not uncommon. They were also named Arquebusiers, according to the arquebus, a long-barreled gun of the 16th Century. The captain of the Arquebusiers , Frans Banning Cocq, is standing beside his Lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburgh. The names of 18 guild members are recorded on a plaque that is visible in the background, though it was added only later to the painting. Literature tends to interpret the remaining persons as allegories.

“The Night Watch” is one of the best known and most popular paintings of Rembrandt. It was commissioned for the banquet hall of the Amsterdam Archers Guild and remained there until 1715. Then, it came into Amsterdam’s city hall and was clipped on all four sides, because the original larger format did not fit the new location. Indeed, the original painting was 4.02 meters high and 5.10 meters wide.