Schutterij - Schuttersstuk (Dutch Civic Guard Group-portraits)

Schuttersstuk (Dutch Civic Guard Group-portraits)

After 1581, the schutterij were officially prohibited from influencing city politics, but since the ruling regency 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.

A similar commemorative group painting tradition (the regentenstuk) was true for other Dutch guilds and institutions as well, such as orphanages, hospitals, and hofjes. In the case of the schutterijen, these paintings were called schuttersstukken. After the schutters agreed how they wanted to be depicted together in paint, for such paintings each member 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. An example of just such a schuttersstuk is Rembrandt's Night Watch. This painting is particularly famous for its drama and use of a completely different setting than the traditional banquet, though the reason for that 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. According to local legend, the schutterij was unhappy with the result in the Nightwatch case: instead of a group of proud and orderly men, they alleged 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 schutterstuk 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 schutterstuk commission, was that it was never known when a schuttersstuk would be commissioned, since this only happened when one of the leading officers died, retired, or moved away.

An example of a young painter who successfully launched his career in this 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.