Officers and Other Guardsmen of the XIth District of Amsterdam, under the Command of Captain Reijnier Reael and Lieutenant Cornelis Michielsz Blaeuw, known as ‘The meagre company’

Entry

Frans Hals was one of only two artists not resident in Amsterdam to receive a commission to portray a civic guard company of that city in the 17th century, the other being Paulus Moreelse, whose Company of Captain Jacob Gerritsz Hoyngh and Lieutenant Nanningh Florisz Cloeck (SK-C-623) was completed in 1616. The so-called Meagre Company shows 16 guardsmen from District XI led by Captain Reijnier Reael (1588-1648) and Lieutenant Cornelis Michielsz Blaeuw (1591-1638). Reael is seated next to the ensign and holds a commander’s baton. Seated in profile next to him, holding a partisan, is Lieutenant Blaeuw. Both men were merchants living in Jodenbreestraat in District XI when the portrait was executed.⁹ Reael had become captain in District XI in 1626, and in 1630 he became one of the governors of the headquarters of the crossbowmen’s civic guard (Voetboogdoelen). Blaeuw had become lieutenant in 1632.¹⁰

The names of the other guardsmen have not come down to us. In a 1974 article, Van Eeghen proposed two potential candidates for the other sitters among the prominent citizens resident in the district: Willem Six (1610-52) and Pieter Ranst (1590-1641).¹¹ While it is not known whether Ranst served in the civic guard, Willem Six later rose to become a captain.¹² More recently, Dudok van Heel has suggested that Nicolaas van Bambeeck (1596-1661) may be the ensign in The meagre company and Jean Pellicorne (1597-after 1653) the second guardsman from the right.¹³ Van Bambeeck lived in Jodenbreestraat (no. 13) and was a son of the wealthiest man in District XI.¹⁴ One of the prerequisites for ensigns was that they were from a wealthy family. The ensign also had to be a bachelor, as he had to march in front of the company and could not risk leaving behind a widow and children. Van Bambeeck married in 1638, and would therefore have met this requirement when the painting was executed. Unlike the men put forward as possible candidates by Van Eeghen, there is a secure portrait of Van Bambeeck with which the ensign in the present painting can be compared. It is especially Van Bambeeck’s large hooked nose in his 1641 portrait, executed by Rembrandt, that makes Dudok van Heel’s hypothesis quite appealing.¹⁵ However, the resemblance of the second guardsman from the right to Jean Pellicorne as we know him from a Rembrandt-school picture in the Wallace Collection,¹⁶ and Cornelis van Poelenburch’s portrait in the Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore¹⁷ is not all that great; the nose and eyes are different and the guardsman has blonde not black facial hair.

From Gerard Schaep’s 1653 list of portraits in the three civic guard headquarters in Amsterdam, we know that the painting was executed for the Voetboogdoelen and that Hals began the portrait and Pieter Codde finished it.¹⁸ The reason Hals himself did not finish the painting can be surmised from four documents published by Bredius in 1913.¹⁹ In the earliest document, dated 19 March 1636, Reijnier Reael and Cornelis Michielsz Blaeuw testified on behalf of all the guardsmen who were to be portrayed that Hals had accepted the commission in 1633, but that the painting was still not finished. After having given his word on 24 June 1635 that he would complete the picture, the patrons had again repeatedly urged him to do so, but to no avail. They now demanded that he come to Amsterdam within 14 days to finish it. If he refused to do so, a local painter would be chosen for the job, and action would be undertaken to recover the money he had already been paid. Hals’s response is recorded in the second document, written in Haarlem on 20 March 1636, at which time the artist was bedridden due to a bad leg. He admitted to having accepted the commission, but with the condition that he would carry it out in Haarlem, not in Amsterdam. Later, he had indeed agreed to go to Amsterdam to work on the heads, which he planned and had already begun to finish in Haarlem. But it proved impossible to get the guardsmen together, and his stay in Amsterdam was costly. He now promised to finish the painting quickly, provided the guardsmen come to Haarlem. In the third document, dated 29 April 1636, Reael and Blaeuw declared that Hals’s version of the story was not entirely truthful. The initial agreement, according to them, was that he would receive 60 guilders per head, which he would work up in Amsterdam and complete in Haarlem. Later, it was agreed that he would receive an extra 6 guilders from each guardsman if he would fully paint not only the heads in Amsterdam but the entire figures, which he had already begun to do with some of them there. This time, Hals was given ten days to come to Amsterdam to resume work on the painting. For some unknown reason this document was only read to Hals three months after it had been written. In his second response, dated 26 July 1636, Hals stuck to his guns, offering to have the painting brought to Haarlem, where he would complete the clothing that needed completing. He would then finish painting the heads, and was certain that none of the guardsmen would mind coming to Haarlem so that he could do so. However, should six or seven of the men not be willing to come, he would have the canvas, which would then be completed to all intents and purposes, transported to Amsterdam and paint the remaining heads. The guardsmen did not take Hals up on his offer, but instead had Pieter Codde complete the painting.

The presence of a cursory underdrawing in oils by Hals’s hand indicates that the composition was his invention.²⁰ Hals followed the Amsterdam tradition for civic guard portraiture by showing the men at full-length. In Haarlem there was a preference for knee-length civic guard portraits, a preference that Hals adhered to in the pieces he executed for that town. By the time he began The Meagre Company, he had painted three civic guard portraits in Haarlem, and was probably putting the final touches to a fourth, the Officers and Sergeants of the St Hadrian Civic Guard Company.²¹ All four Haarlem paintings are banqueting scenes. There are nonetheless compositional similarities between The Meagre Company and the Officers and Sergeants of the St Hadrian Civic Guard Company. In both paintings there is less movement than in Hals’s earlier civic guard pieces, primarily because the emphatic diagonals have been replaced by horizontal compositions.²² The left side of The Meagre Company, in particular, where the captain and lieutenant are shown seated, flanked by the ensign and a figure seen mostly from behind, recall Hals’s Haarlem composition from around 1633. As in that painting, Hals may have intended to show the Amsterdam guardsmen out of doors, for scientific examination of the painting revealed that a building in the right background was painted over.²³

The notion one gets from Hals’s second statement, that he still needed to paint as many as seven of the heads, was confirmed by technical examination of the painting conducted in 1988. The seven figures on the right side of the canvas are the work of Codde, who did his best to suppress his usual smooth, almost invisible brushwork in favour of an imitation of Hals’s much broader touch.²⁴ Codde apparently also changed the central figure standing with his back to the viewer.²⁵ The X-radiographs reveal that originally even more of this figure’s back was visible, and that his left hand was placed on his chest. The figure also initially wore a bandolier with powder charges instead of the present sash, and he may also have been outfitted with a sword. Codde was also responsible for putting the finishing touches to a number of the figures that had already been largely completed by Hals. Van Eeghen suggested that the guardsmen may have chosen Codde to complete Hals’s picture because he was one of the few artists living in District XI at the time.²⁶ Her hypothesis that Codde may also have been a member of Captain Reael’s company cannot, unfortunately, be substantiated with documentary evidence.²⁷

Finally, it remains to be explained why the painting is known as The Meagre Company. The nickname can be traced back to Jan van Dyk’s 1758 list of paintings in Amsterdam’s town hall.²⁸ Van Dyk remarked that the guardsmen in Hals and Codde’s portrait ‘are so withered and slender that one justifiably can call them the meagre company’.²⁹

Jonathan Bikker, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 112.