Merry Company on a Terrace

‘The work of art depicting a merry company, some say the Prodigal Son, is best known as the pissing boy […].’ This is how the artists’ biographer Arnold Houbraken described Verkolje’s reproductive print after Jan Baptist Weenix. That Houbraken mentions the somewhat vulgar
title of the painting is understandable. After all, the child aiming his pee at the dog’s muzzle steals the show here.