Night Watch or The Night Watch or…

Night Watch or The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Franz Banning Cocq (Dutch: De Nachtwacht), the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, may be more properly titled The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch.

The painting is renowned for three elements: its colossal size (three hundred and sixty three by four hundred and thirty-seven centimeter, or eleven feet ten inches  by fourteen feet four inches), the effective use of light and shadow, and the perception of motion in what would have been, traditionally, a static military portrait.

This painting, completed in 1642, at the peak of the Dutch Golden Age, depicts the eponymous company moving out, led by Captain Frans Banning Cocq (dressed in black, with a red sash) and his lieutenant, Willem van Ruytenburch (dressed in yellow, with a white sash).

With effective use of sunlight and shade, Rembrandt leads the eye to the three most important characters among the crowd, the two gentlemen in the center (from whom the painting gets its original title), and the small girl in the center left background.

Behind them the company's colors are carried by the ensign, Jan Visscher Cornelissen.

The militiamen are also called Arquebusiers, after the arquebus, a sixteenth-century long-barrelled gun.

Night Watch is today on prominent display in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, being the most famous painting in their collection.