Lot 1474 Nα

This work shows a group of elegant ladies and gentlemen gathered in an interior to make music, play cards and drink. The guests are dressed in costly attire and ornate hats, and the paintings that decorate the walls and the fine wine glasses all testify to the luxury amassed here. Anthonie Palamedesz has grouped the figures into pairs: One man sings for a lady whilst two guests converse behind them and two further figures at another table are engrossed in a card game. In the centre of the composition a lady gazes out towards the beholder and to her left a man seen from behind is being served wine by a young attendant.
The present work is dated 1635 (cf. RKD no. 206935), making it around three years younger than the signed and dated Merry Company kept in the Mauritshuis in The Hague (inv. no. 615). In contrast to the work in The Hague, Palamedesz has here included the male figure on the left to balance the composition and function as a repoussoir element to the group on the right. The young servant boy pouring wine in a graceful gesture is also to be found in the Hague work. The artist must have been fond of this creation, as we find him again, albeit in a slightly differing form, in a later Merry Company kept in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne (inv. no. WRM 1058).