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A study of the theory and practice of seventeenth-century Dutch group portraits, Manhood, Marriage, and Mischief offers an account of the genre's comic and ironic features, which it treats as comments on the social context of portrait sitters who are husbands and householders as well as members of civic and proto-military organizations.The introduction picks out anomalous touches with which Rembrandt problematizes standard group-portrait motifs in The Night Watch: a shooter who fires his musket into the company; two girls who appear to be moving through the company in the wrong direction; guardsmen who appear to be paying little or no attention to their leader's enthusiastic gesture of command.Were the patrons and sitters aware of or even complicit in staging the anomalies? If not, did the painter get away with a subversive parody of militia portrait conventions at the sitters' expense? Parts One and Two respond to these questions at several levels: first, by analyzing the aesthetic structure of group portraiture as a genre; second, by reviewing the conflicting accounts modern scholars give of the civic guard company as an institution; third, by marking the effect on civic guardsmen of a mercantile economy that relied heavily on wives and mothers to keep the homefires burning. Two phenomena persistently recur in the portraits under discussion: competitive posing and performance anxiety.Part Three studies these phenomena in portraits of married couples and families. Finally, Part Four examines them in The Night Watch in the light of the first three parts. The result is an interpretation that reads Rembrandt's painting both as a deliberate parody by the sitters and as the artist's covert parody of the sitters
E-Book Content
H a r ry
B e r g e r ,
& J r .
Manhood, Marriage, Mischief R e m b r a n dt ’ s ‘ N i g h t Wat c h ’ a n d Ot h e r D u t c h G ro u p P o rt r a i t s
f o r d h a m u n i v e rs i t y p r e s s , n e w yo r k 2007
frontispiece Rembrandt, The Night Watch (1642). Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Copyright © 2007 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other— except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berger, Harry. Manhood, marriage, and mischief : Rembrandt’s Night watch and other Dutch group portraits / Harry Berger, Jr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978-0-8232-2556-9 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8232-2556-9 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn-13: 978-0-8232-2557-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-10: 0-8232-2557-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Portraits, Group —Netherlands. 2. Portrait painting, Dutch— 17th century. 3. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606–1669. Night watch. 4. Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 1606–1669— Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. nd1319.3.b47 2007 757.09492'09032 — dc22 2006038241 Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of the College Art Association.
Printed in the United States of America 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1 First Edition
W
e dance round in a ring and suppose.
But the secret sits in the middle and knows. — ro b e rt f ro s t
F
or Helen Tartar, without whose patience, loyalty, generosity, courage, and sheer brilliance the last five books I’ve written would never have seen the light of day
Contents Illustrations
xi
Preface
xv
Introduction: A Shot in the Dark
1
pa rt o n e g ro u p p o rt r a i t s a n d t h e f i c t i o n s o f t h e p o s e 1.
Toward the Interpretation of Performance