An Elegant Company

1632

Pieter Codde (Dutch, 1599-1678)

A master of scenes of finely dressed revelers known as “merry companies,” Amsterdam painter Pieter Codde here demonstrated his sharp sense of composition. He animated a gathering of 18 guests and attendants through a complex network of gestures, glances, and poses, with a young woman dressed in luxurious silver satin at center. Such images of joyful gatherings, with participants acting in accordance with their privileged social station, would have functioned as models of polite behavior to cosmopolitan art collectors.

Status: On View, Gallery 212
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Pieter Codde
Title: An Elegant Company
Place: Holland (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1632
Medium: Oil on panel
Inscriptions: Inscribed on music sheet along left edge: P. Codde 1632
Dimensions: 58.8 × 92.7 cm (23 1/8 × 36 1/2 in.); Framed: 84.8 × 118.1 × 6.4 cm (33 3/8 × 46 1/2 × 2 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection
Reference Number: 1933.1069
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/16347/manifest.json

Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection, Chicago, 1925, p. 159.
Art Institute of Chicago, A Guide to the Paintings in the Permanent Collection, Chicago, 1932, p. 179.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection, Chicago, 1961, p. 80
Peter C. Sutton, Masters of Seventeenth-Century Dutch Genre Painting, exh. cat., Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1984, pp. 178-179, fig. 1.
Peter C. Sutton, A Guide to Dutch Art in America, Grand Rapids, 1986, p. 52.
Renate Trnek, Die holländischen Gemälde des 17. Jahrhunderts in der Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Künste in Wien, exh. cat., Vienna, Kunsthistoriches Museum Wien, 1992, p. 100 n. 7.
Dedo von Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, Rubinglas des ausgehenden 17. und des 18. Jahrhunderts, Mainz, 2001, pp. 63–64, fig. 5.
Pieter Biesboer and Martina Sitt, Satire en vermaak: Schilderkunst in de 17e eeuw: Het genrestuk van Frans Hals en zijn tijdgenoten 1610–1670, exh. cat., Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum, 2003, p. 25, pl. 19.
Jochai Rosen, Pieter Codde (1599-1678): Catalogue Raisonnè, Newcastle upon Tyne, 2020, pp. 136-137, 302, no. 52.

New York, The V. G. Fischer Art Galleries, Collection of Paintings by Old Masters of All Schools, 1912–1913, no. 38.

George, Sixth Duke of Leuchtenberg (died 1912), by 1912 [according to New York 1912-1913]. Böhler and Steinmeyer; purchased by Martin A. Ryerson (died 1932), 1914 [according to an invoice dated May 25, 1914 in curatorial file]; on loan to the Art Institute from 1925; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1933.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.