Frans Hals

“ HALS, FRANS (1580?–1666) , Dutch painter, was born at Antwerp according to the most recent authorities in 1580 or 1581, and died at Haarlem in 1666. As a portrait painter second only to Rembrandt in Holland, he displayed extraordinary talent and quickness in the exercise of his art coupled with improvidence in the use of the means which that art secured to him. At a time when the Dutch nation fought for independence and won it, Hals appears in the ranks of its military gilds. ”

“ Frans Hals of Haarlem, one of the most brilliant painters of the impressionist school that he did much to found, achieved remarkable success in the artistic grouping of a number of portraits, so that each should have the desired prominence while yet the effect of the whole was that of a unity. ”

“ Wagen has said that his portrait of Admiral Kortenaar, in the gallery of Amsterdam, betrays the teaching of Frans Hals, and the statement need not be gainsaid; yet on the whole Van der Helst’s career as a painter was mainly a protest against the systems of Hals and Rembrandt. It is needless to dwell on the pictures which preceded that of 1648, called the Peace of Münster, in the gallery of Amsterdam. ”

“ In one hour I saw there twenty canvases commenced; a hundred designs—drawings, painted studies, the cast of a statue, portraits which suggested to me the name of Frans Hals, scenes made from life in the open streets; notably one large sketch of a landscape—the October mist on the shore, the trees half stripped, big yellow leaves strewing the ground. In a word, works in which is incessantly sought, or more often asserts itself, the sentiment of the sincerest and most original art, and of the most personal talent. ”

“ As a portrait-painter Van Dyck may lack the precision of Holbein or tender intimacy of Cornelius Janssen, the directness and amazing technical skill of Velazquez or Frans Hals, the mysterious pathos of Rembrandt; but in his own manner he reigns supreme, and his genius needs no interpreter. It is curious that in England, where his fame ranks so high, Van Dyck's works can be studied only with difficulty, since they are so widely dispersed. ”

“ Although he practised portrait-painting, Roestraten devoted himself principally to painting still life, this class of art being practised with great success in Haarlem by the sons and pupils of Frans Hals. ”

“ We also searched the catalogue in vain for the oldest dated portrait by Frans Hals, namely, that of Scriverius, dated 1613, which forms part of the Warneck Collection in Paris, although it is mentioned by the author on pp. 27, 29, 84, and 96 of the text. Again, we find no mention of the delightful Portrait of a Man [46] in the Van Lynden collection, at present lent to the Mauritshuis at the Hague, nor of various other pieces. [47] As regards the drawings, there is no doubt whatever that the drawing in the British Museum is an original Hals. ”

“ Vermeer was not like that. But when it comes to perfection in the use of paint, when it comes to the perfect painter—why, here he is. His contemporary Rembrandt of the Rhine is a giant beside him; but ruggedness was part of his strength. His contemporary, Frans Hals of Haarlem, could dip his brush in red and transform the pigment into pulsating blood with one flirt of his wrist, and yet think of his splendid carelessnesses elsewhere. ”

“ She died in 1660. In 1636 she married the well-known artist, Jan Molemaer. She did her work at a most interesting period in Dutch painting. Her earliest picture is dated 1629; she was chosen to the Guild of St. Luke at Haarlem in 1633.
Recent investigations make it probable that certain pictures which have for generations been attributed to Frans Hals were the work of Judith Leyster. In 1893 a most interesting lawsuit, which occurred in London and was reported in the Times, concerned a picture known as "The Fiddlers," which had been sold as a work of Frans Hals for £4,500. ”

“ Solid and clever as an imitator of nature in its ordinary garb, he is always spirited, sometimes rough, but generally plain, and quite as unconscious of the sparkle conspicuous in Frans Hals as incapable of the concentrated light-effects peculiar to Rembrandt. ”

“ The regiment in garrison marching out towards Leyden," explained Hugo later. "They always sing most of the way." We went to Haarlem that day, as on many others, when I saw all its sights and ways. The great Frans Hals pictures, the museums of antiquities, the dogs harnessed under the handcarts piled with washing or vegetables (a law forbids their pulling in front) ; the weekly market where all manner of things from old clothes to kettles are laid round the cathedral walls ”

“ A fair specimen of his art is a “Lady playing a Harpsichord to a Young Girl and her Lover” in the van der Hoop collection at Amsterdam, now in the Ryks Museum. More characteristic, but not better, is a large company of gentle-folk rising from dinner, in the Academy at Vienna.
Literature.—See W. Bode, Frans Hals und seine Schule (Leipzig, 1871) ; W. Unger and W. Vosmaer, Etchings after Frans Hals (Leyden, 1873) ; Percy Rendell Head, Sir Anthony Van Dyck and Frans Hals (London, 1879) ; D. Knackfuss, Frans Hals (Leipzig, 1896) ; G. S. Davies, Frans Hals (London, 1902) . ”

“ The public also applauded the skill with which such subjects were rendered by the artists, and the latter, since still-life presented excellent opportunities for the display of craftsmanship, were glad enough to reciprocate the popular taste. Thus resulted what one notes as a second point in the consideration of Holland still-life painting: namely, that the artists freely introduced objects of still-life into their portraits. I cannot cite a more typical instance than the earliest military group-picture by Frans Hals in the Haarlem Museum. ”

“ While foreign painters, in portraiture especially, have been disposed to follow the direct example of Frans Hals, the Hollanders themselves, both in landscape and genre, have been influenced by the so-called “little masters,” and, in the case of Josef Israels, by Rembrandt himself. And the result of this influence has been to make modern Dutch painters, as a group, the best brushmen of their age.{107}
CHAPTER VII
DUTCH GENRE THE tendency toward genre painting began before the separation of the Holland Free State from the Spanish Netherlands. ”

“ At Amsterdam is the celebrated “Flute Player,” once in the Dupper collection at Dort; at Brussels, the patrician “Heythuysen”; at the Louvre, “Descartes”; at Dresden, the painter “Van der Vinne.” Hals’s sitters were taken from every class of society—admirals, generals and burgomasters pairing with merchants, lawyers, clerks. To register all that we find in public galleries would involve much space. There are eight portraits at Berlin, six at Cassel, five at St Petersburg, six at the Louvre, two at Brussels, five at Dresden, two at Gotha. ”

“ Haarlem and Oudenarde both claim the birth of Adrian Brouwer, a painter of Dutch topers. As to his life little is known. Tradition says that he drank and dissipated his earnings, while his work is evidence that he knew inn life with some particularity; but his epitaph calls him “a man of great mind who rejected every splendour of the world and who despised gain and riches”. Brouwer, who was born about 1606, was put by his mother, a dressmaker at Haarlem, into the studio of Frans Hals. Hals bullied him, as he bullied his first wife. ”

“ The charm is by comparison slender and superficial, the product, not of originality, but of imitation. For the art of Holland had ceased to be the expression of conviction, and no longer exemplified the morality that had given character to its motive and unimpeachable integrity to its technique.{49}
CHAPTER IV
FRANS HALS THE readiest way to study the art of Holland in the seventeenth century is under the separate heads of portraiture, landscape, marine, genre, and still-life. ”

“ Their prototype appears in Flemish painting, in such canvases of fashionable life as we have already noted by Lucas van Valckenborch. The Dutch development of this motive, however, produced smaller canvases, very carefully composed, with superior quality of color and skilful rendering of detail. The leader in this class of picture was Dirck Hals (1591-1656) , who was a pupil of his brother Frans; and it is the latter’s corporation pictures that became the model for corresponding groups of “society people,” banqueting, engaged in concerts, or disporting themselves in garden-parties. ”

“ There is in Haarlem Stadhuis a very interesting painting by the last of these, which shows Franz Hals' Life School and some of his pupils in the year 1652. Work is in full swing, and five of the master's sons—the youngest, Nicolaes, being twenty-four years old—and Dirk Hals with Van Deelen, Molyn, Berckheijde himself, and his little brother Gerritsz, seated at a table, are drawing from a nude model. ”

“ And the judgment stands, especially when you find yourself at Haarlem in the presence of the superb facility and quality of Hals’s genius. None the less, when you face the prodigious output of Van der Helst’s talent in the Rijks Museum, you realize that, while he was less efficient as a painter, less gifted with the ease, as it were, of improvisation, in his compositions, he had yet an exuberance of invention and a gusto for characteristic generalization, so amazing that from a distance one may be disposed to question if Hals, after all, was so much greater. ”

“ The five Governors are old, weary, and sad. The colours are greyish, the brushwork feeble, and expressionless faces match the ashen [Pg 79] pallor of the skin. Their hands, too, have lost their grip, and there is no curl in their hair. Humour is no longer Hals' painting mixture, the pathos of "the passing" is upon him; and yet, with an evident expiring effort, the youngest of the five old men actually displays the gaiety of a scarlet knee-ribbon—it is the last impression of a parting touch!
And now the brush falls from the painter's hand; the few colours left upon his palette are dry ”

“ He introduced the young Hals to his friends and models.
Very many of the well-to-do citizens affected artistic studies, and several became efficient painters. Of these Jan Van Heemsen (1570-1641) , a wealthy burgher and a friend of the Hals family, patronised Van Mander and his pupils. He had considerable skill in painting life-size figures, remarkable for easy pose, and animated manner—very much in the style adopted by Franz Hals.
These Antwerp and Haarlem worthies were the "makers" of Franz Hals in the elementals of his art ”

“ The flag is generally the one bit of gorgeous colour in the scene; but Franz Hals seized the opportunity to show his wonderful skill in detail while painting the cuffs and ruffs worn by these grandees. In all his work there is an impression of strength rather than of beauty; it is the charm of expressiveness he is aiming at, rather than the charm of grace and colour to which the Italian school was devoted. He differed from that school, also, in his choice of subjects, for he was distinctly and almost entirely a portrait painter, and within his own limited range he is unsurpassed. ”

“ Those who are left behind are too much engrossed in their own affairs to care greatly about the grief of an old man, or a wrong done to an innocent girl."
"I'll not believe it," said Hals hotly.
"Alas, 'tis only too true! Men nowadays—those at any rate who are left in our cities—no longer possess that spirit of chivalry or of adventure which caused our forebears to give their life's blood for justice and for liberty."
"You wrong them, mynheer," protested the artist.
"I think not. Think on it, Hals. You know Haarlem well; you know most people who live in the city. ”

“ He is so much a man of our own time, and in consequence has been so belauded, that to some it may sound like lèse-majesté to dispute his position in modern estimation. On the other hand, if one tries to get beyond the barrier of approbation with which artists and the public have blocked the free view of Hals in relation to other portrait-painters of his own school, such as Rembrandt or Terborch, or of other schools or periods, the suspicion of his comparative commonness of feeling may grow into a conviction. ”

“ A young man, seated sideways, with his arm across the back of his chair, looks out of the grey-green-black background with a saucy air. He is saying, "I wonder what you think of me!" It takes a little time to focus this impression, for Hals has dashed on his pigments almost too liberally, and he has gashed and smeared the mass with his hardest brush. When we do get the point of view, we feel disposed immediately to snub the young upstart for his impertinence.
In spite of these spurts, and others, misfortune fell the way of Franz and Lysbeth Hals. ”

“ I don't know," replied Hals, "you are the best sitter I have ever had. To-day has been one of perfect, unalloyed enjoyment to me."
All his vulgar, mean little ways had vanished, his obsequiousness, that shifty look of indecision in the eyes which proclaimed a growing vice. His entire face flowed with the enthusiasm of a creator who has had to strain every nerve to accomplish his work, but having accomplished it, is entirely satisfied with it. ”

“ Two or three "Zechbruders" or "Jolly Topers," and some gay young sparks with mandolines—"Schalks naar" or "Buffoon," as each is quite erroneously styled—walked out of Hals' studio in 1625. Doubtless they were skits or caricatures of fellow-artists, for the clever painters of Haarlem were not quite "Fools" or "Buffoons," nor were they all only "Jolly Topers."
All this time Hals was making arrangements with his old patrons of St. Joris' Guild for another great portrait-group to be put up in the Stadhuis. ”

“ Other men have painted single heads as well or better: but Hals stands alone in his gusto, his abundance, his surpassing brio. It is a thousand pities that neither Lamb nor Hazlitt ever made the journey to Haarlem, because only they among our writers on art could have brought a commensurate gusto to the praise of his brush. ”