Company Making Music

Making music at home was a pleasure of the well-off in the Dutch Republic, and in the 1660s it became a favourite subject for painters of refined interiors, where tavern scenes had once held the stage. Here a young woman stands reading from a sheet of music, one hand raised. Across a table spread with an oriental carpet, a man with a lute and a second woman, her chin on her hand, listen to her. Netscher painted it in 1665.

The panel's later life can be followed by its price. At an Amsterdam sale in 1738 the Hague collector Willem Lormier bought it for 720 guilders, and in 1752 he sold it to his fellow collector Govert van Slingelandt for 1,000. From there it passed to the princes of Orange. It belongs to the Mauritshuis and has hung in the Gallery Prince Willem V since 2010.