Schutterij
The schutterij, civic guard, or town watch, was a defensive military support system for the city authorities.
In the Northern Netherlands, after the change to Protestantism that followed the Beeldenstorm and, depending on the town, took place sometime between 1566 and 1580, the officers had to be a member of the Dutch Reformed Church.
It was in these great halls where the large group portraits hung for centuries, and many paintings suffered dramatically from enthusiastic gymnasts over the years.
Group portraits were popular among the large numbers of civic associations that were a notable part of Dutch life, such as the officers of a city's schutterij or militia guards, boards of trustees and regents of guilds and charitable foundations and the like.
Rembrandt's famous The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, better known as The Night Watch (1642), was an ambitious and not entirely successful attempt to show a group in action, setting out for a patrol or parade and also innovative in avoiding the typical very wide format of such works.
The amount paid might determine each person's place in the picture, either head to toe in full regalia in the foreground or face only in the back of the group.
According to local legend, the schutterij was unhappy with the result in The Night Watch: instead of a group of proud and orderly men, they alleged Rembrandt had not painted what he saw.
Ernst van de Wetering declared in 2006 that The Night Watch "... in a certain sense fails ... Rembrandt wanted to paint the chaos of figures walking through each other, yet also aim for an organised composition.
"[2] Winning a commission for a schuttersstuk was a highly competitive task, with young portrait painters competing with each other to impress members of the schutterij.
By the second half of the 18th century the schutterij were inactive (sometimes only exercising once a year and with the ill or rich buying their way out of service) and only of importance to Orangists.
The Patriots faction tried to breathe new life into the schutterij in 1783 or to create an alternative - in many cities, exercitiegenootschappen (military-exercise societies), vrijcorpsen (free corps) or voluntary schutterijen arose which anybody could join and with officers chosen democratically.
The Orangists poked fun at the ministers, like François Adriaan van der Kemp propagating the system from the pulpit and shopkeepers joining the new militia.
The system of schutterijen no longer worked after five hundred years, which was controlled by a select group of Dutch Reformed families, but it survived the Batavian Revolution and French occupation of the Kingdom of Holland until finally William I of the Netherlands set up professional police forces.
For instance the schutterij of Geertruidenberg, made up of people who meet regularly to dress in traditional costume and demonstrate how cannons were used in strongholds.
