Night Watch (painting)

This article is about the Rembrandt painting. For other uses, see Night Watch (disambiguation).

De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch)

Artist	Rembrandt
Year	1642
Type	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	363 cm × 437 cm (142.9 in × 172.0 in)
Location	Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Night Watch or The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq (Dutch: De Nachtwacht) is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn.

The painting may be more properly titled The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. It is on prominent display in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, being the best known painting in their collection. The Night Watch is considered to be one of the most famous paintings in the world.

Key elements

The painting is renowned for three elements: its colossal size (363 x 437 cm ~ 11ft 10in x 14ft 4in), the effective use of light and shadow (chiaroscuro), and the perception of motion in what would have been, traditionally, a static military portrait.

This painting was completed in 1642, at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age. It depicts the eponymous company moving out, led by Captain Frans Banning Cocq (dressed in black, with a red sash) and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenhurch (dressed in yellow, with a white sash). With effective use of sunlight and shade, Rembrandt leads the eye to the three most important characters among the crowd, the two gentlemen in the centre (from whom the painting gets its original title), and the small girl in the centre left background. Behind them the company's colours are carried by the ensign, Jan Visscher Cornelissen.

Rembrandt has displayed the traditional emblem of the Arquebusiers in the painting in a natural way: the girl in yellow dress in the background is carrying the main symbols. She is a kind of mascot herself: the claws of a dead chicken on her belt represent the clauweniers (arquebusiers); the pistol behind the chicken stands for 'clover'; and, she is holding the militia's goblet. The man in front of her is wearing a helmet with an oak leaf, a traditional motif of the Arquebusiers. The dead chicken is also meant to represent a defeated adversary. The colour yellow is often associated with victory.

Alterations to original

17th century copy with indication of the areas cut down in 1715.

For much of its existence, the painting was coated with a dark varnish which gave the incorrect impression that it depicted a night scene, leading to the name by which it is now commonly known. This varnish was removed only in the 1940s.

In 1715, upon its removal from the Kloveniersdoelen to the Amsterdam Town Hall, the painting was cut down on all four sides. This was done, presumably, to fit the painting between two columns, an all too common practice before the 19th century. This resulted in the loss of two characters on the left-hand side of the painting, the top of the arch, the balustrade, and the edge of the step. This balustrade and step were key visual tools used by Rembrandt to give the painting a forward motion. A 17th century copy of the painting by Gerrit Lundens at the National Gallery, London shows how it looked originally.

Painting's commission

The painting is said to have been commissioned by the Captain and 17 members of his Kloveniers (civic militia guards), and although 18 names appear on a shield in the centre right background, the drummer was hired, and so was allowed in the painting for free. A total of 34 characters appear in the painting. Rembrandt was paid 1,600 guilders for the painting (each person paid one hundred), a large sum at the time. This was one of a series of seven similar paintings of the militiamen (Dutch: nl:Schuttersstuk) commissioned during that time under various artists.

The painting was commissioned to be hung in the banquet hall of the newly built Kloveniersdoelen (Musketeers' Meeting Hall) in Amsterdam. Some have suggested that the occasion for Rembrandt's commission and the series of other commissions given to other artists was the visit of the French queen, Marie de Medici, in 1638. Even though she was escaping at the time from her exile from France by her son Louis XIII her arrival was met with great pageantry.

Location

The Night Watch was first hung in the Kloveniersdoelen in Amsterdam in the Groote Zaal (Great Hall). This is now known as the Doelen Hotel. In 1715 it was moved to the Amsterdam town hall, for which it was altered. When Napoleon occupied the Netherlands, the town hall became the Palace on the Dam. The magistrates moved the painting to the Trippenhuis of the family Trip. Napoleon ordered it back, but after the occupation the painting was moved to the Trippenhuis again, which had now become the Dutch Academy of Sciences, and was moved to the new Rijksmuseum building when it was finished in 1885.

The Night Watch rolled around a cylinder inside a crate. The canvas would be stored in this condition throughout the long war years.

The painting was moved in September 1939, just before the outbreak of the Second World War. The canvas was detached from its frame and rolled around a cylinder. The rolled painting was stored in a castle in Medemblik, north of Amsterdam.^[1] After the end of the war, the canvas was unrolled, re-mounted and restored; and then the Night Watch returned to its rightful place in the Rijksmuseum.

On Dec. 11, 2003, The Night Watch started its move to a temporary location, due to a major refurbishment of the Rijksmuseum. The painting was detached from its frame, wrapped in stain-free paper, put into a wooden frame which was put into two sleeves, driven on a cart to its new destination, hoisted up, and brought into his new home through a special slit.

While the refurbishment takes place, The Night Watch can be observed from its temporary location in the Philipsvleugel of the Rijksmuseum. When the refurbishment is finished in 2013, the painting will be returned to its original place in the Nachtwachtzaal (Dutch for "Room of the Night Watch").

Popular reception

A persistent misconception has it that Rembrandt's decline in popularity was due to a negative public reception of the painting. The myth has even made its way into modern advertising; in 1967 KLM featured the painting in an advertisement which said "See Night Watch, Rembrandt's spectacular 'failure' (that caused him to be) hooted... down the road to bankruptcy". The myth has no reasonable origin: there is no record of criticism of the painting in Rembrandt's lifetime, and Captain Cocq even had a watercolor made of it for his personal album.

The decline in the artist's popularity was likely due not to reaction to any one painting, but to a broader change in taste. During the 1640s wealthy patrons began to prefer the bright colors and graceful manner that had been initiated by such painters as the Flemish portraitist Anthony van Dyck.

Acts of vandalism

The work was attacked with a bread knife by an unemployed school teacher, Wilhelmus de Rijk, in 1975, resulting in a large zig-zag of slashes. It was successfully restored but some evidence of the damage is still observable close-up. De Rijk committed suicide in April 1976.

In 1990, a man sprayed acid onto the painting with a concealed pump bottle. Security guards intervened and water was quickly sprayed onto the canvas. Luckily, the acid had only penetrated the varnish layer of the painting and it was fully restored.

Cultural legacy

• The work has inspired musical works in both the classical and rock traditions, including the second movement of Gustav Mahler's 7th Symphony, the lyrics of King Crimson's "The Night Watch" by Richard Palmer-James, and Ayreon's "The Shooting Company of Captain Frans B. Cocq" from Universal Migrator Part 1: The Dream Sequencer.
• Alexander Korda's 1936 biographical film Rembrandt depicts the painting, shown in error in its truncated form, as a failure at its completion, perceived as lampooning its outraged subjects.
• In Jean-Luc Godard's 1982 film, Passion, The Night Watch is reenacted with live actors in an opening shot. Godard explicitly compares his film to Rembrandt's painting, describing them both as "full of holes and badly-filled spaces." He instructs the viewer not to focus on the overall composition, but to approach his film as one would a Rembrandt and "focus on the faces."
• The Night Watch is a major plot device in the eponymous 1995 film, Night Watch. In the film the painting is stolen.
• The Night Watch is the subject of a 2007 film by director Peter Greenaway called Nightwatching, in which the film posits a conspiracy within the musketeer regiment of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, and suggests that Rembrandt may have immortalized a conspiracy theory using subtle allegory in his group portrait of the regiment, subverting what was to have been a highly prestigious commission for both painter and subject. His 2008 film Rembrandt's J'accuse is a sequel or follow-on, and covers the same idea, using extremely detailed analysis of the compositional elements in the painting; in this Greenaway describes The Night Watch as (currently) the fourth most famous painting in the Western world, after the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is also shown as hanging in the main room of the restaurant in another Greenaway film The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover.

New LED illumination in 2011

• 26 October 2011, the Rijksmuseum unveiled new, sustainable LED lighting ^[2] for the Night Watch. With technology ever advancing, it is the first time LED lighting is able to render the fine nuances of the painting's complex color palette. The lighting is developed by Philips Lighting and was inaugurated by Rijksmuseum Director Wim Pijbes and Philips President and CEO Frans van Houten. Rogier van der Heide, Chief Design Officer at Philips Lighting, was responsible for the design.
• The new illumination uses LED lights with a color temperature of 3,200 Kelvin, similar to warm-white light sources such as tungsten halogen. It has a color rendering index of over 90, which makes it suitable for the illumination of artifacts such as the Night Watch. Using the new LED lighting, the museum saves 80% on energy and offers the painting a safer environment due to the absence of UV radiation and heat.

Other representations

The sculptures of the Night Watch in 3D at the Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam in 2006-2009

• A bronze-cast representation of the famous painting was exposed in Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam in 2006-2009.
• The only full-sized replica in the Western world is displayed by the Canajoharie Library & Art Gallery, in Canajoharie, New York, donated to the library in the early 20th century by the library's founder, Bartlett Arkell.
• The front cover of the British edition of Terry Pratchett's novel Night watch is a parody of this painting, the original appears on the back cover (not in the paperback version).
• The painting is obtainable in the Animal Crossing series of video games as the "Amazing Painting".

Notes

1. ^ Nicholas, Lynn H. (May 1995) [1994]. The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York City: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-40069-1. OCLC 32531154. 
2. ^ [1] New Light on the Night Watch

External links

• Night Watch Google Art Project
• The Night Watch at the WebMuseum
• Night Watch at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
• Rembrandt and the Night Watch
• The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn
• Night Watch Replica at Canajoharie Library and Art Gallery