A Party of Merrymakers

Pieter Jansz. Quast

ca. 1635–38 · Oil on wood · European Paintings

Viewers of the time would have taken in at a glance not only the off-key carousing but also signs—the fancy shoes, frizzy hair, open collar, and so on—that make the symbolic satyr redundant. Quast worked in the cosmopolitan milieus of Amsterdam and The Hague. His paintings and finished drawings reveal a broad knowledge of Dutch, Flemish, and French popular imagery (including Callot’s etchings) as well as the comic stage.

Artist

Pieter Jansz. Quast

Date

ca. 1635–38

Medium

Oil on wood

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

Bequest of Josephine Bieber, in memory of her husband, Siegfried Bieber, 1970