Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 90-91.(Budapest, 1999)
NÉMETH, ISTVÁN: Musical Company
edge of a fireplace decorated with the figure of a satyr is visible. A landscape painting hangs on the wall in the background, and another male figure is seen in a doorway. Pieter Quast, as indicated by his peasant genre scenes reminiscent of Adriaen Brower and Adriaen van de Venne, and his depictions of tooth-pulling or foot-operations, had a definite penchant for subjects with a comic aspect. 17 Usually a dash of humor is detectable in his representations of elegant companies as well, due to a certain extent to his slightly caricature-ish portrayal of the characters. All this may be said to apply in the case of the Budapest painting, especially regarding the officer strutting on the right, whose brandy-blossom nose has a decidedly comic touch. For that matter we may meet a similar cast of characters in many other paintings by Pieter Quast. 18 In the present connection we might even attach significance to the exceedingly long, almost donkeylike ears of the ornamental figure decorating the mantelpiece. Could the painter have employed this means to hint that the "musicians" in his painting were in fact producing nothing but an ear-splitting bray? All this is of course mere conjecture, but in any case we see a fireplace decorated by an identical figure in another Merry Company by Quast, where the participants in the scene are also "bursting into song". 19 It is also conceivable that we are in fact looking at a bordello scene, for the genre painting of the day often portrayed courtesans with lutes in their hands, and in Holland in the 17 th century brothels were frequently referred to as "musical houses". 20 Closely related to the Budapest painting, both as regards choice of subject and the type of dramatispersonae, is a 1636 painting by Pieter Quast, formerly likewise in the Kilényi collection, which had recently come up at a London auction. 21 Another parallel is offered by this artist's Musical Company of 1633, in which we see women of a similar type. 22 It is most likely that the Budapest painting also dates from the 1630s. Another one of these scenes of gallantry is seen in the small genre painting that had been catalogued at the time of its purchase in 1970 as the work of an unknown 17thcentury Flemish(?) artist. 23 A company of six is arrayed around a table covered with a red cloth; the group's focus is the carefree figure of a woman wearing a hat who is entertaining her companions with her lute-playing (and possibly song) (fig. 84). To her 17 See among others the two works by this artist at the Herzog Anton Ulrich-Museum in Braunschweig (Inv. nos. 298 and 299) or a recently auctioned tavern scene (Christie's, London, 7 July 1995, No. 53) and the especially satirical "Tooth Extraction", (Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Inv. no. 2149.) Ix In a work by Quast, the figure and garments of the foppish "doctor" both show many close parallels to the figure standing on the right side of the Budapest painting (Museum of Historic Art. Princeton University, Inv. no. 80, Photo RKD). A likewise very similar officer can be seen in the same artist's picture titled Officer ina Stable Interior at the National Gallery in London: Brown, op. cit. (Note 4) 106. The same figure also appears in an engraving made by Salomon Saverij after a work by Pieter Quast, which carries the inscription Dots de Bruydt daermen om danst: Tot lering en vermaak, op. cit. (Note 11)33. iy The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Inv. no. 1973.155.1, (catalogued as Pieter Codde) see: Baetjer, K., European Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art by artists born in or before 1865. A Summary Catalogue, 1-3. New York 1980, 1, 29.. fig. 404. 20 In this connection see, among others: Salomon, N., Jacob Duck and the Gentrification of Dutch Genre Painting, Doornspijk 1998, 81. 21 A Couple Making Music, oil on panel, 26,5 x 19 cm, auctioned at the Ernst sale in Budapest, 26 November 1917, No. 107 and, more recently, Sotheby's, London, 7 December 1994, No. 11. 22 Christie's. London, 21 July 1972, No. 147. 23 Oil on panel, 28,7 x 35,5 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Inv. no. 70.6.
