concert

Aelbert van der Schoor spent his whole career in Utrecht, the Dutch city that had taken up the manner of Caravaggio: strong shadow, candlelight, rooms full of musicians and drinkers. This concert scene belongs to that local fashion. It carries the date 1662, the last year from which any dated work by him survives, so it comes near the end of a fairly obscure life in painting. Oddly, he is better remembered now for the opposite mood, a small group of grim still lifes heaped with skulls and bones as reminders of death. Anyone who knows those macabre pictures may be surprised that the same hand also sat a company of people down to make music.