Room 23
Hals, Leyster, Kalf
Paintings in this room
We are in a dingy tavern with a small gathering of drinkers and smokers squatting on low wooden stools and chairs. The focus of their attention – and ours – is the tussle going on between a man and a young woman on the left-hand side of the painting.The depiction is unusually lewd. The man, his t...
This is a typical example of the small but exquisitely executed still-life paintings which were Adriaen Coorte’s specialism. He used a dark background and dramatic lighting to highlight the contrast between different shapes and surfaces, such as the translucence of ripe gooseberries and the musty...
A group of cheerful young people crowd around a small table in an elegant room. The fashionable clothing they wear, some of which is very colourful, differs from the sombre black costumes we can see in many Dutch portraits of the time.Dirck Hals specialised in scenes of people feasting and enjoyi...
We are looking at a family group, a mother and father surrounded by their seven children with a nursemaid holding the latest baby. There are two centres of attention among the sitters, formed around the two youngest children – just what you might expect in a large family.These poses and interacti...
This painting demonstrates Frans Hals’s gift for creating lively and animated portraits that suggest distinctive personalities. We don't know who the woman in this compelling work is, but her elegant dress and jewellery indicate that, like many of Hals’s patrons, she may have been the wife of a w...
An eighteenth-century label stuck on the back of this painting identifies the sitter as Marie Larp. It forms a pendant to the portrait of her husband, the Haarlem silk dyer Pieter Tjarck. The pair must have commissioned their portraits from Frans Hals soon after their wedding in 1634, when Hals w...
An eighteenth-century label stuck on the back of this painting identifies its sitter as Pieter Tjarck, a Haarlem silk dyer. It forms a pendant to the portrait of his wife, Marie Larp. The pair must have commissioned their portraits from Frans Hals soon after their wedding in 1634, when Hals was a...
Although apparently casually displayed, the objects in this still life would immediately have suggested wealth and extravagance to a seventeenth-century viewer. The cloths have a satin-like sheen, and the objects on them are all expensive luxuries. They‘re carefully chosen, not just because they...
Willem Claesz. Heda uses muted colours to show us the ingredients of a meal – with a focus on quality, not quantity. Everything on the table is expensive: this is the meal of a rich man. The white table cloth is made of damask, a luxurious silk fabric. Lemons were brought in from the Mediterranea...
This still-life painting – one of the most popular genres in seventeenth-century Holland – celebrates the challenges of depicting the play of light on different surfaces and textures. Look at the subtle highlights on the weave of the Turkish carpet, the sheen and lustre on silver and glass, the...
Constantijn Huygens was a senior diplomat who spoke several languages and had a wide knowledge of the arts and sciences. In this portrait, he’s caught in action, receiving a message from a young clerk. Interrupted in his work, he wears a riding outfit as if ready to be up and off in a moment on s...
'He who plays with cats gets scratched’ – in other words, he who looks for trouble will get it. This is an old Dutch motto that appears to be a possible source for Judith Leyster’s cheerful picture, and it’s been suggested that the painting was intended as both delightful entertainment and a warn...
A young girl stands by a column and a balustrade, her hair tied back in a chignon, with tendrils hanging down on either side of her face. The girl’s dress dates the picture to the late 1640s. Isaack Luttichuys often painted his sitters against architectural backdrops and at first glance the paint...
A happy young couple make music in an elegant panelled room with costly furniture. An open door, marble columns on either side, reveals a glimpse of a room beyond, where a fine gauze curtain hangs at a window. The young man sits at his ease, his long fingers plucking the strings of the theorbo –...
The mischievous smiles of three children light up a dreary room with bare walls and little furniture; the barrel suggests it may be the back room of an inn. Their clothes are shabby and torn, but each has a sparkle in the eye and they look at home in their surroundings.The boy in the red jacket h...
Here Jan Jansz. Treck has risen to the challenge of evoking the lustre of and distorted reflections in silver, pewter, glass, porcelain and eggshells as well as the complex shadows in a crumpled linen cloth. It was a highly valued skill in Dutch still-life painting and this rather beautiful examp...
Jan Jansz. Treck’s complex but sombre picture is a vanitas, a type of still life that holds a moral message. A still life often presents costly objects in an elegant composition to be admired and discussed by the viewer, like the musical instruments, lacquer box, Rhenish jug and scarf made with g...