'As the Old Sing, so Pipe the Young'

The Mauritshuis owns two versions of this family scene. This is the smaller one, and probably the earlier, painted around 1663 to 1665. The larger canvas hangs in the Mauritshuis itself. This one belonged to Prince William V, and it hangs in the Gallery Prince Willem V, the rooms he fitted out for his pictures. Everyone at the table is setting a bad example. A laughing man in a dark hat draws on a long clay pipe from Gouda, and the young woman beside him is filling a pipe of her own. A boy plays the recorder with a bagpiper behind him, and the wine is going round. By the fire an old man sings, while an old woman stands a toddler on her knee, a rattle in its hand, and teaches it to dance. In January 1795 French troops entered the Dutch Republic, the prince fled to England, and his paintings were taken to Paris for the Louvre. This canvas came back after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, and the next year it was hanging again in the same gallery on the Buitenhof.