BUYTEWECH, Willem Pietersz.
(b. 1591/92, Rotterdam, d. 1625, Rotterdam)

Merry Company

1617-20
Oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Buytewech was not very active as a painter. Only about ten pictures can be attributed to him, and these were all made during the last seven or eight years of his short life. He had close contact with Frans Hals: according to an old inventory reference, both artists worked on the same picture; they used the same models; and Buytewech even copied some of Hals's works. But he never acquired Hals's fluency or boldness in the use of fat oil paint and he never worked life-size. Compared with Hals, the efforts of Buytewech are tight and his touch is minute. Nevertheless, he painted enough to justify the claim that he established the important category of the 'merry company' in an interior. An excellent example of the type is this painting in Rotterdam.

The fat Falstaff type who wears a garland of sausages is the same model who appears in one of Hals's early paintings. Buytewech's work already shows the early Baroque phase of Dutch painting. The figures are depicted close to the spectator, with a detailed realism. The colours have become bright and show a bit of a plein-air effect, although there is too much local colour - particularly pinks, yellows, and blues - to produce complete unity and harmony.

Buytewech was not yet the type of narrow specialist who developed in the following generation. His subject matter included religious themes, allegorical motifs disguised as scenes from everyday life, book illustrations, and charming landscapes as well as genre scenes, all this largely in graphic art.