The good humour of Hals's popular scenes recalls the joyous gatherings painted by the contemporary Dutch followers of the earthy, sensuous Italian painter Caravaggio.
Birds gathering everywhere, painted on the wall in flocks, perched on the coffee table, stitched on pillows and framed on the wall with a thought bubble asking employees to please tidy up after themselves.
And in student union buildings across the country, young people this week were gathering to paint banners and persuade their classmates to join them.
But on gathering communications data, he painted with a broader brush.
In his latest large-scale text mural for the Nuart festival, an annual international street art gathering held in Norway, SpY painted the word "alive" upside down on the exterior wall of an abandoned warehouse.
He went on to paint gatherings of spooky figures and animals, their intense colour and silhouetted forms recalling both Arshile Gorky and the early renaissance.
"One and Others," a sculpture of upright, painted wood forms by Louise Bourgeois, resembles a gathering of penguins.
The Federal Reserve's minutes from its latest monetary policy gathering acknowledged signs that the recession is easing, but still painted a somber outlook for the rest of the year.
Today, modern moms may join each other for limited amounts of time at designated gathering spots (playgrounds, preschools, paint your own pottery studios), but they generally go back to their boxes with their kids — who may or may not then get to watch two more hours of YouTube slime videos — alone.
The canvas, which was painted outdoors, seems to assemble the whole of Paris of the Second Empire a smart, fashionable gathering composed chiefly of habitués of the Café Tortoni and of the Café Guerbois, which was the rendezvous of the Batignolles artists.
