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Perhaps because of the confusion between this painter and later painters with the same name, most notably Jean-François Millet, Mark Twain later wrote a farcical play called Is He Dead?, about an artist who stages his own death in order to make more money with his work. |
== References == |
Frans Hals the Elder (UK: , US: ; Dutch: [frɑns ˈɦɑls]; c. 1582 – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He lived and worked in Haarlem, a city in which the local authority of the day frowned on religious painting in places of worship but citizens liked to decorate their homes with works of art. Hals was highl... |
There were two quite distinct schools of portraiture in 17th-century Haarlem: the neat (represented, for example, by Verspronck); and a looser, more painterly style at which Frans Hals excelled. Some of Hals's portrait work is characterised by a subdued palette, reflecting the politely serious tones of his fashionable ... |
Hals was born in the Spanish-occupied southern Netherlands (probably at Antwerp) but, because of the chaos wrought there by the Spanish at that time, his family moved to Haarlem when he was little. Many of his Haarlem clients were also émigrés from the South. |
Biography |
Hals was born in 1582 or 1583 in Antwerp, then in the Spanish Netherlands, as the son of cloth merchant Franchois Fransz Hals van Mechelen (c. 1542–1610) and his second wife Adriaentje van Geertenryck. Like many, Hals's parents fled during the Fall of Antwerp (1584–1585) from the south to Haarlem in the new Dutch Repub... |
In 1610, Hals became a member of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, and he started to earn money as an art restorer for the town council. He worked on their large art collection, which Karel van Mander had described in his Schilderboeck ("Painter's Book") published in Haarlem in 1604. The most notable works were those of... |
The earliest known example of Hals's art is the portrait of Jacobus Zaffius (1611). His 'breakthrough' came with the life-sized group portrait The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616. His most famous sitter was René Descartes, whom he painted in 1649. |
Frans Hals married his first wife Anneke Harmensdochter around 1610. Frans was of Catholic birth, however, so their marriage was recorded in the city hall and not in church. Unfortunately, the exact date is unknown because the older marriage records of the Haarlem city hall before 1688 have not been preserved. Anneke w... |
Contemporaries such as Rembrandt moved their households according to the caprices of their patrons, but Hals remained in Haarlem and insisted that his customers come to him. According to the Haarlem archives, a schutterstuk that Hals started in Amsterdam was finished by Pieter Codde because Hals refused to paint in Ams... |
Hals's work was in demand through much of his life, but he lived so long that he eventually went out of style as a painter and experienced financial difficulties. In addition to his painting, he worked as a restorer, art dealer, and art tax expert for the city councilors. His creditors took him to court several times, ... |
The Dutch nation fought for independence during the Eighty Years' War, and Hals was a member of the local schutterij, a military guild. He included a self-portrait in his 1639 painting of the St Joris company, according to its 19th-century painting frame. (It has not been possible to confirm this.) It was not common fo... |
Frans Hals died in Haarlem in 1666 and was buried in the Grote Kerk church. He had been receiving a city pension, which was highly unusual and a sign of the esteem with which he was regarded. After his death, his widow applied for aid and was admitted to the local almshouse, where she later died. |
Artistic career |
Hals is best known for his portraits, mainly of wealthy citizens such as Pieter van den Broecke and Isaac Massa, whom he painted three times. He also painted large group portraits for local civic guards and for the regents of local hospitals. He was a Dutch Golden Age painter who practiced an intimate realism with a ra... |
Hals was fond of daylight and silvery sheen, while Rembrandt used golden glow effects based upon artificial contrasts of low light in immeasurable gloom. Hals seized a moment in the life of his subjects with rare intuition. What nature displayed in that moment he reproduced thoroughly in a delicate scale of color and w... |
Wedding portraits |
The only record of his work in the first decade of his independent activity is an engraving by Jan van de Velde copied from the lost portrait of The Minister Johannes Bogardus. Early works by Hals show him as a careful draughtsman capable of great finish yet spirited, such as Two singing boys with a lute and a music bo... |
During this period, he painted the full-length portrait of Madame van Beresteyn (Louvre) and a full-length portrait of Willem van Heythuysen posing with a sword. Both these pictures are equalled by the other Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia (with different portraits) and the same militia in 1627 and Ban... |
From 1620 till 1640, he painted many double portraits of married couples on separate panels, the man on the left panel and his wife on the right panel. Only once did Hals portray a couple on a single canvas: Couple in a garden: Wedding portrait of Isaac Abrahamsz. Massa and Beatrix van der Laan, (c. 1622, Rijksmuseum A... |
His style changed throughout his life. Paintings of vivid color were gradually replaced by pieces where mostly black came to dominate. This was probably due to the sober dress of his Protestant sitters, more than any personal preference. One simple way to observe this change is to look at all of the portraits that he p... |
Portrait painter |
Later in his life, his brush strokes became looser, fine detail becoming less important than the overall impression. His earlier pieces radiated gaiety and liveliness, while his later portraits emphasized the stature and dignity of the people portrayed. This austerity is displayed in Regents of the St Elizabeth Hospita... |
This tendency coincides with the period when Hals gained fewer commissions from the wealthy, and some historians have suggested that a reason for his predilection for black and white pigment was the low price of these colors as compared with the costly lakes and carmines. Both conclusions are probably correct, however,... |
As a portrait painter, Hals had scarcely the psychological insight of a Rembrandt or Velázquez, though in a few works, like the Admiral de Ruyter, the Jacob Olycan, and the Albert van der Meer paintings, he reveals a searching analysis of character which has little in common with the instantaneous expression of his cha... |
According to the Frans Hals catalogue raisonné, 1974, 222 known paintings can be ascribed to Hals. This list was compiled by Seymour Slive in 1970−1974 who also wrote an exhibition catalogue in 1989 and produced an update to his catalogue raisonné work in 2014. In 1989, another authority on Hals, Claus Grimm, disagreed... |
It is not known whether Hals ever painted landscapes, still lifes or narrative pieces, but it is unlikely. His debut for Haarlem society in 1616 with his large group portrait for the St George militia shows all three disciplines, but if that painting was his signboard for future commissions, it seems he was subsequentl... |
Painting technique |
Hals was a master of a technique that utilized something previously seen as a flaw in painting, the visible brushstroke. The soft curling lines of Hals's brush are always clear upon the surface: "materially just lying there, flat, while conjuring substance and space in the eye." |
In this way his style was similar to Édouard Manet; in fact, Hals was described by author Raymond Cogniat as "the Manet of his day." Lively and exciting, the technique can appear "ostensibly slapdash" – people often think that Hals 'threw' his works 'in one toss' (aus einem Guss) onto the canvas. This impression is not... |
In the 17th century his first biographer, Schrevelius wrote: "An unusual manner of painting, all his own, surpassing almost everyone," on Hals's painting methods. For that matter, schematic painting was not Hals's own idea (the approach already existed in 16th century Italy), and Hals was probably inspired by Flemish c... |
Influence |
Frans influenced his brother Dirck Hals (born at Haarlem, 1591–1656), who was also a painter. Additionally, five of his sons became painters: |
Harmen Hals (1611–1669) |
Frans Hals the Younger (1618–1669) |
Jan Hals (1620–1654) |
Reynier Hals (1627–1672) |
Nicolaes Hals (1628–1686) |
Though most of his sons became portrait painters, some of them took up still-life painting or architectural studies and landscapes. Still lifes formerly attributed to his son Frans II have since been re-attributed to other painters, however. Hals painted a young woman reaching into a basket in a still life market scene... |
Other contemporary painters who took inspiration from Hals were, with the main cities they were based in: |
Jan Miense Molenaer (1609–1668), Haarlem and Amsterdam |
Judith Leyster (wife of Molenaer, 1609–1660), Haarlem and Amsterdam |
Adriaen van Ostade (1610–1685), Haarlem |
Adriaen Brouwer (1605–1638), mostly Antwerp |
Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck (1597–1662), Haarlem |
Bartholomeus van der Helst (1613–1670), Amsterdam |
Cornelis de Bie (1621–1664), Amsterdam |
Hals had a large workshop in Haarlem and many students, though 19th century biographers questioned some of his pupils, since their painting styles were so dissimilar to Hals. In his De Groote Schouburgh (1718–21), Arnold Houbraken mentions Philips Wouwerman, Adriaen Brouwer, Pieter Gerritsz van Roestraten, Adriaen van ... |
In terms of style, the closest to Hals's work is the handful of paintings that are ascribed to Judith Leyster, which she often signed. She also 'qualifies' as a possible student, as does her husband, the painter Jan Miense Molenaer. |
In the 19th century, his technique influenced the work of impressionists and realists including Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Charles-François Daubigny, Max Liebermann, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Gustave Courbet, and in the Netherlands, Jacobus van Looy and Isaac Israëls. Lovis Corinth named Hals as his biggest infl... |
The Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo: 'What a joy it is to see a Frans Hals, how different it is from the paintings – so many of them – where everything is carefully smoothed out in the same manner.' Hals chose not to give a smooth finish to his painting, as most of his contemporarie... |
Legacy |
The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica has an article on Frans Hals by Paul George Konody, who observes: Hals's reputation waned after his death and for two centuries he was held in such poor esteem that some of his paintings, which are now among the proudest possessions of public galleries, were sold at auction for a few po... |
Nevertheless, Hals's art did not go altogether unappreciated in the time between his death in 1666 and the 1860s. In his Groote Schouburgh (1718–1721), Arnold Houbraken recorded Hals's life and praised his style, adding that the figures in one of the large group portraits: ... zoo kragtig en natuurlyk geschildert zyn, ... |
Starting at the middle of the 1860s his prestige rose again thanks to the efforts of critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger. With his rehabilitation in public esteem came the enormous rise in value, and, at the Secretan sale in 1889, the portrait of Pieter van den Broecke was bid up to 4,420 francs, while in 1908 the National G... |
Hals's work remains admired, particularly with young painters who can find many lessons about practical technique from his unconcealed brushstrokes. Hals's works have found their way to countless cities all over the world and into museum collections. From the late 19th century, they were collected everywhere—from Antwe... |
Several of his most important works are owned by the town council of Haarlem. They are now at the Frans Hals Museum in the Groot Heiligland, Haarlem. Before 1913 they hung in the Town Hall, where Impressionists went to see them. |
The Hals crater on Mercury is named in his honour. |
Hals was pictured on the Netherlands' 10-guilder banknote of 1968. |
The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616 appears on the restaurant wall in the 1989 Peter Greenaway film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. |
Public collections (selection) |
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem |
Frick Collection, New York City |
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen |
Louvre, Paris |
Mauritshuis, The Hague |
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. |
Kenwood House |
Wallace Collection, London |
See also |
List of paintings by Frans Hals |
Han van Meegeren |
References |
Further reading |
(in Dutch) Frans Hals biography in De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen (1718) by Arnold Houbraken, courtesy of the Digital library for Dutch literature |
Seymour Slive: Frans Hals, 3 Volumes (oeuvre catalogue), New York / London 1970–1974 |
Frans Hals (exhibition catalogue Washington/London/Haarlem, 1989. |
Claus Grimm published his Frans Hals. Das Gesamtwerk in 1989 (Stuttgart/Zürich; also translated into Dutch and English). |
N. Middelkoop and A. van Grevenstein, Frans Hals. Leven, werk, restauratie (Life, work and restorations) (Haarlem Amsterdam 1988). This work gives an account of restorations of the riflemen's pieces, but it also gives a picture of Hals's life and work. |
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