The Night Watch
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 to 1669) · 1642
A company of Amsterdam civic guardsmen bursts out of a dark archway. Their captain, Frans Banninck Cocq, in black with a red sash, gives an order to his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch, in pale yellow, and around them thirty or so men load muskets, raise a banner, beat a drum and shout. A small girl in a golden dress with a dead chicken at her belt slips through the crowd, lit as if by a spotlight. The painting is not a night scene at all; the name was given in the eighteenth century when dark varnish had turned the daylight brown. Its real title is the militia company of district two under the command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq.
Group portraits of militia companies were common, but they were normally rows of men at a table. Rembrandt turned the format into a drama, with figures moving in and out of light, weapons pointing in every direction and a sense of noise. Look at the lieutenant's yellow coat and the shadow of the captain's hand falling across it, at the musket firing just behind their heads, and at the way the whole composition is built from a few strong diagonals of pike, banner and outstretched arm. The men each paid a share of the fee, and their names are recorded on the shield hung on the archway.
The canvas was trimmed on all four sides in 1715 to fit a wall in the town hall, losing two figures on the left; in 2021 the museum used artificial intelligence and a small seventeenth century copy to print the missing strips and show the painting complete for a few months. It has been attacked three times and repaired each time, and since 2019 Operation Night Watch has studied and now restores it inside a glass room in front of visitors. It remains, for most people, the reason they came to Amsterdam.
Did You Know? The painting was cut down in 1715 to fit between two doors in the town hall, and the two guardsmen lost from the left edge are known only from an early copy.
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