Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 90-91.(Budapest, 1999)

NÉMETH, ISTVÁN: Musical Company

precisely to Dirck Hals.

25 Subsequently the name of Pieter Quast was brought up in connection with this picture, but in our opinion neither attribution is quite satisfactory. After a closer examination of the painting technique and individual details, the name of Anthonie Palamedesz. (1601-1673) comes to mind instead. He was a member of the Delft school who worked in Amsterdam at the end of his career, and some of his works indeed show a remarkable similarity to this Musical Company. Palamedesz. studied with the noted Delft portrait painter Michiel van Mierevelt, and later, according to certain hypotheses, he was a student of Dirck Hals.

26 In addition to genre pictures showing fashionable gatherings of merrymakers and portraits, he painted numerous guardhouse scenes, called cortegaerdjes in 17

th century Holland.

27 The closest stylistic parallels to the picture under consideration are found among works by Palamedesz. from the 1630s. A similar subject is seen in his painting at Osnabrück, signed Anthonie Palamedesz., with a date assigned to around 1635 (fig. 85), on the left side of which there is the same man in dark clothes standing with his back turned to us as in the Budapest genre painting.

28 The identical painting technique employed in rendering the clothes, especially the brilliantly white decorative lace collar, is especially striking. In a genre picture by the same artist, auctioned in London in 1994, the facial features of the elegant young woman seated on the right correspond completely to the main character in the Budapest Musical Company (fig. 86).

29 The same characteristic feminine type crops up in the Philadelphia kitchen scene signed Palamedesz. and dated to around 1640.

30 The figure of the man leaning forward, with his face semi-obscured by the broad-rimmed hat - as seen in the center of the painting at the Museum of Fine Arts - is one of Anthonie Palamedesz.'s favorite motifs. We see a very similar figure, among others, in his painting executed in 1634 now at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna,

31 in a scene of a gathering painted in the same year, now at the Karlsruhe Museum,

32 and in the genre picture of a musical gathering, 25 Horst Gerson's kind oral communication, Budapest 1970. Gerson based this attribution primarily on the similarities of the Budapest painting to works painted by Dirck Hals in the 1620s. 26 For the biographic details of Anthonie Palamedesz. see: Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, op. cit. (Note 3) 292; for the master-pupil relationship between Dirck Hals and Anthonie Palamedesz. see: Brown, op. cit. (Note 4) 229; certain early works by Palamedesz. are indeed so close to the manner of Dirck Hals that these have been occasionally attributed to the Haarlem master who is better known for his scenes of such gatherings. See: The Hoogsteder Exhibition of Music and Painting in the Golden Age, op. cit. (Note 24) cat.no. 32. 27 In connection with these latter paintings by Palamedesz. see: De Hollandse kortegaard. Geschilderde wachtlokalen uit de Gouden Eeuw, Naardcn (Ncderlands Vcstingmuseum) 1996, 62-74. 28 The Concert, Inv.no. 736A. Oil on panel, 42 x 61 cm. See: Kayser, H., Niederländische und flämische Malerei des fő. und 17. Jahrhunderts. Hg. vom Museums- und Kunstvcrcin Osnabrück, Osnabrück 1983, 89. 29 Elegant Company in an Interior. Oil on panel, 44,5 x 61 cm. Sotheby's, London, 26 October 1994, No. 123. 30 Sutton, P. C, Northern European Paintings in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Maarssen - The Plague 1990, 225, No. 81. 31 Scene of a Gathering. Oil on panel, 51 x 83 cm, Inv. no. 6047. See: Haja, M. (ed.), Die Gemäldegalerie des Kunsthistorischen Museums in Wien. Verzeichnis der Gemälde, Vienna 1991. 91, Plate 515. 32 Oil on panel, 49,5 x 61,5 cm. See: Hedinger, B., Karten in Bildern. Zur Ikonographie der Wandkarte in holländischen Interieurgemälden des 17. Jahrhunderts, Hildesheim - Zurich - New York 1986, 348. The same picture, or a study for it. is published by Jan Briels; see: Briels, op. cit. (Note 5) 112, fig. 120.