Guardroom with Soldiers Playing Cards

Duck represents the guardroom tradition in Utrecht. He prefers large crowds gathered in spacious halls and exploits all the tricks known to artists of his time to create the illusion of space: curtains or large piles of weaponry in the foreground to set the front plane, an emphasis on the orthogonal lines made by the tiles or boards on the floor, vistas into rooms beyond the one in which the main action takes place, and aerial perspective. If mutual influence is a criterion, he was as unimpressed by the Utrecht follower of Caravaggio as they were by him. His subjects range from boorish episodes in taverns to a lovely picture of a woman ironing in a kitchen (Centraal Museum, Utrecht).

Concerning this painting in Budapest, although the soldiers are playing cards they are fully dressed, wearing hats and boots, their swords, breast-plates and banner in readiness beside them. The grey, undecorated walls of the guardroom suggest the discipline and boredom of their lives, the monotony of which can be relieved only by practice on the drum. The genre painters preferred not to show soldiers on guard - perhaps because they seemed ill at ease when performing this duty.