Merry company

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.

Scope of the term

The definition of a "merry company" is far from rigid, and overlaps with several other types of painting. Portraits of family groups or bodies such as militia companies may borrow an informal style of composition from them, but works where the figures were intended to represent specific individuals are excluded. There are normally between four and about a dozen figures shown, which typically includes both men and women, but may just consist of men, perhaps with female servants, as in the Buytewech illustrated. Contemporary Dutch descriptions of paintings from inventories, auction catalogues and the like, use (no doubt somewhat arbitrarily) other terms for similar compositions including "a buitenpartij (an outdoor party or picnic), a cortegaarddje (a barrack-room or guardroom scene), a borddeeltjen (a bordello scene), and a beeldeken or moderne beelden (a picture with little figures or modern figures)". "Musical party" or "concert" is often used when some of the main figures are playing instruments. More generally such works may be referred to as "company paintings" or "company subjects" (but this is not to be confused with Indian Company painting, a style patronized by the British East India Company). Few if any titles used for 17th century genre paintings can be traced to the artist; those used by museums and art historians today may derive from a record in the provenance or be made up in modern times. Paintings showing specific celebrations such as weddings or the festivities for Twelfth Night, the main mid-winter celebration in the Netherlands, or the playing of specific games, are likely to have titles relating to these where the subject is still clear. For example, a painting by Godfried Schalcken (1665–1670, Royal Collection) is known from his biography by his pupil Arnold Houbraken to represent The game of 'Lady, Come into the Garden', and is so titled, although the rules of this are now unknown but "clearly involved the removal of clothes", at least by some male participants. In La Main Chaud ("the hot hand") male participants just got smacked. Paintings showing the parable of the Prodigal Son in his prodigal phase are conceived as merry company scenes of the brothel type, though they are often larger, as was expected of a history painting.

Interpretation As with other types of Netherlandish genre painting, the body of merry company paintings include some with a clear moralistic intention, carrying a message to avoid excess in drink, lavish spending, low company and fornication. Others seem merely to celebrate the pleasures of sociability, often with a socially aspirational element. Many fall somewhere in between, are hard to interpret, and "contain within them an obvious contradiction between their goal of condemning certain types of excessive behaviour and the amusing and attractive aspect of this very behaviour and its representation".

Often the art historian wishing to interpret them has first to decide such questions as whether the scene is placed in a home, a tavern or a brothel, and if a tavern whether the women present are respectable or prostitutes, or whether the artist had an intention to convey definite meaning to his contemporary viewers on these questions at all. The titles given later to paintings often distinguish between "taverns" or "inns" and "brothels", but in practice these were very often the same establishments, as many taverns had rooms above or behind set aside for sexual purposes: "Inn in front; brothel behind" was a Dutch proverb. Scenes with prostitutes do not reflect the realities of 17th century prostitution in many ways, but offer a conventionalized visual code. The madam or (as art historians like to call them) "procuress" is always an aged crone, whereas court records for Amsterdam (the national centre for Dutch prostitution) show that most were still fairly young, and 40% in their twenties. The presence of a procuress figure is by itself sufficient to justify interpreting a painting as a brothel scene. Fine clothes (rented from the madam) and in particular feathers in headdresses are said to be signifiers of prostitutes, as well as the more obvious loosened clothes, low cleavages, and a provocative frontal stance. But in the later part of the century demure downcast looks by the woman feature in many scenes thought to represent prostitution; in the famously ambiguous threesome The Gallant Conversation by Gerard ter Borch, the young woman is seen only from behind. Of one painting by Jacob Ochtervelt, (c. 1670, now Cleveland, illustrated at left) Wayne Franits says:

At first glance, the Musical Company in an Interior appears to be an elegant gathering of well-heeled youths [and women and a servant]... The picture exudes an aura of calmness and finesse. Nevertheless, the series of female portraits on the wall behind the figures discloses the true nature of its subject. There is strong evidence that actual brothels displayed portraits like these to assist clients in selecting their partners.

According to Simon Schama,

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.