's
The Night Watch shows a
schutterij preparing to move out. , with a stiff and unsubtle depiction 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 that 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 schuttersstuk 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 family, or make a separate copy of the sitter's portrait for private use. The tricky part of fishing for a schuttersstuk commission was that it was never known when a schuttersstuk would be commissioned since that happened only when one of the leading officers died, retired, or moved away. An example of a young painter who successfully launched his career in that way is
Bartholomeus van der Helst. His selfportrait is in the very painting that was his first schutterstuk commission in 1639 and resulted in a lucrative contract with the Amsterdam Bicker family. In Amsterdam, most of those paintings would ultimately end up in the possession of the city council, and many are now on display in the
Amsterdams Historisch Museum; there are no significant examples outside the Netherlands. ==Decline==