GODFRIED SCHALCKEN (MADE 1643-THE HAGUE 1706)
The Game of 'Lady, come into the Garden'
late 1660sOil on panel | 63.5 x 49.5 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 405343
We don’t know the rules of this game, apparently played by the fashionable youth of seventeenth-century Dordrecht. Presumably the players shed a garment every time they fail in some humorous task. The defrocked victim is a self-portrait; the figure behind him is a portrait of his sister, summoning her next target. Parlour games in art are usually metaphors for love – in this case conveying the idea that, in love, men should learn to lose gracefully.
Acquired by George IV in 1803, when Prince of Wales
Acquired by George IV in 1803, when Prince of Wales