The Arts Society Welwyn Garden Lecture on Wednesday 21st October

Our members appreciated our October lecture on Rembrandt's "The Night Watch - an Anatomy of a Masterpiece", being fascinated and amused in equal measure. Hilary Williams is passionate about Rembrandt, having first seen her first Rembrandt aged 10. We looked at Rembrandt's previous paintings to see how he developed as an artist, and also where his influences for the painting came from. She talked about the woman in white who has a spotlight on her and a chicken at her waist, and why Hilary believes that she was painted despite not being in the under drawing as a woman would not be in the Kloveniers guild (local militia group) who commissioned the painting.

Hilary told us that the painting was a commission that Rembrandt won for the great hall of the Kloveniersdoelen, Amsterdam. It's a schuttersstuk, group portraits of a city militia unit called a schutterij, but more dynamic some of the earlier works of this type. She observed that one copy had two men to the left of the painting which is now missing from the original, informing what used to be there before it was cut down to fit the intended space. She talked about the people involved in commissioning the painting and where they lived. It's a wonder that the painting survived for us to see today - it's been hidden in a cave in 1942, attacked twice with a knife and sprayed with acid in 1990 so that the dog in the portrait (there is usually a dog) is only a shadow of what should be there. This was a lecture with so much information that it should not be missed if you get the chance to hear it!