Banquete dos oficiais da Guarda Cívica de São Jorge

In Haarlem in the 1620s the civic guard companies were as much dining clubs as militias, and when a set of officers finished their three-year term they marked it with a lavish farewell banquet. Frans Hals painted these officers of the St George guard around their table in 1627. Each man wanted a good likeness and a good place at the board, and Hals kept them alive and talking, sashes bright, glasses raised, one officer half-turned as if interrupted mid-sentence. He knew this world from the inside, having enrolled in the same St George company himself. The colonel, Aernout Druyvesteyn, takes the head of the table. Hals painted these Haarlem guardsmen more than once, loosening his brush a little further each time.