By Ines Keane
The painting everyone calls The Night Watch has a correct title that almost nobody uses. It is Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq. That is a mouthful, and the nickname is the better advertisement. It is also, according to Wikipedia, a misnomer.
What it is
Wikipedia gives the painter as Rembrandt van Rijn, the year as 1642, the medium as oil on canvas and the size as 363 by 437 centimetres. It is owned by the Amsterdam Museum and on permanent loan to the Rijksmuseum. The Rijksmuseum’s own page gives the museum’s address and says it is open daily; we have not reproduced hours, which change.
The picture shows a civic militia company, a schutterij, setting out. Wikipedia names Captain Frans Banninck Cocq, in black with a red sash, and his lieutenant Willem van Ruytenburch, in yellow with a white sash, and the ensign Jan Visscher Cornelissen, who carries the company’s colours. The article counts 34 figures. It adds that a young girl carries a dead chicken on her belt, which Rembrandt included as a reference to the emblem of the arquebusiers (the clauweniers). Eighteen names appear on a shield in the background, painted around 1715, and the hired drummer was added to the picture for free.
Why “night”?
The name comes from the varnish. Wikipedia says a dark varnish covered the painting for much of its history and made it look like a night scene. The article does not say when the nickname was first used. It does say the varnish was removed in the 1940s, and the Rijksmuseum’s page says restorers are today removing old varnish under a microscope, in a glass chamber where the public can watch. Our reading: those two statements are about different layers at different times, and the sources do not tie them together, so we do not claim that the 1940s cleaning “fixed” the name.
Why a militia picture at all
Wikipedia says the painting was commissioned around 1639 by Cocq and seventeen militia members, for the banqueting hall of the newly built Kloveniersdoelen in Amsterdam, and finished in 1642, at the height of the Dutch Golden Age. It was one of a series of similar group portraits commissioned from various artists. The same article says it is thought Rembrandt painted it in a lean-to in his garden, because it was too big for his studio. It first hung in the Great Hall of the Kloveniersdoelen.
The cut
In 1715 the painting was moved to Amsterdam’s Town Hall and trimmed on all four sides, probably to fit between two columns, Wikipedia says; this was common practice before the nineteenth century. The cut removed two figures on the left, the top of the arch, the balustrade and the edge of the step. The missing pieces have not been found, and the article does not say how many centimetres were taken from each side.
What survives of the lost composition is a seventeenth-century copy by Gerrit Lundens (1622 to 1683), on loan from the National Gallery in London, which shows the picture uncut. In 2021, according to the same article, the Rijksmuseum used convolutional neural networks to recreate the trimmed sections from the copy, correcting for perspective and using colours and brushstrokes associated with Rembrandt. It was shown beside the original from June to September 2021. The museum does not plan a permanent display, so that visitors are not misled into thinking they see the full original, and the article presents the additions as a scientific interpretation, not as the artist’s work.
Operation Night Watch
The Rijksmuseum’s page calls Operation Night Watch the largest and most versatile research and restoration project of its kind for the painting. It began on 8 July 2019, after five years of research, and takes place in a specially designed glass chamber so the public can watch. Wikipedia agrees on the 2019 start and says the work was livestreamed. The Rijksmuseum page lists short films on the red nose, on how the varnish is removed and on a dog in the picture.
Dates in order
- About 1639: commission (Wikipedia).
- 1642: painting completed (Wikipedia).
- 1715: moved to the Town Hall and trimmed (Wikipedia).
- 1940s: varnish removed (Wikipedia).
- 8 July 2019: Operation Night Watch begins (Rijksmuseum).
- June to September 2021: AI reconstruction shown beside the original (Wikipedia).
Side by side: two accounts of the 2019 project
| Wikipedia | Rijksmuseum | |
|---|---|---|
| Start | July 2019 | 8 July 2019 |
| Public access | Glass enclosure, livestreamed | Glass chamber, public can watch |
| Research before | Not stated | Five years |
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia for most of the history, and the museum’s own page for the current project. We did not find an independent art-history source we could load, so the Wikipedia account of the commission and cut rests on a single article. Treat the commission and trimming details as secondary reporting.
What we left out
Anything about the painting’s price at the time or since, accounts of damage to the canvas, and dates of past opening hours.
Quick answers
Why is The Night Watch called that? According to Wikipedia, dark varnish made the painting look like a night scene; the article calls the title a misnomer.
Was The Night Watch cut down? Yes, says Wikipedia: in 1715 it was trimmed on all four sides to fit between two columns, and two figures on the left were lost.
Where is it? The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the page says restoration is carried out in a glass chamber the public can watch.
Related on this site: texel-island-eierland-lighthouse-dunes-sheep, tulip-mania-what-the-records-show, limburgse-vlaai-pie-pgi-tradition
Roam first. Shop later.