PLATE VII.—THE MARKET GIRL (LA BOHÉMIENNE)
(Louvre Gallery, Paris)
Painted in 1630. They call her "La Bohémienne" in Paris, but why we do not know. She is not a gipsy girl, but a slut out of Haarlem Fish-market, wholly bereft of all sense of appearance, and caring only for passing joke and gibe. The girl was a favourite studio model also, for studies of a figure and face like hers abound in the work of Haarlem painters. Thinly painted, in simple colours, this is a masterpiece of pigment snapshots. Its sauciness is as natural as may be. No doubt she and Hals exchanged many a bit of racy banter; perhaps she dared him to paint her just as she was.
The master's addiction to strong drink called for energetic action, and the older pupils were accustomed of an evening to take it in turn to fetch him home from his cups, undress him, and tuck him comfortably into bed.
"Now when Franz, lying in bed, thought he was alone in his room, his piety came to the surface; for however tipsy he might be he generally closed his halting prayer with this petition: 'Dear Lord, take me soon up into Heaven!' Some pupils who heard him repeat this request night after night decided to test one day whether their master was really in earnest, and Adriaen Brouwer—that ape of humanity—undertook to carry out the joke. Brouwer, in company with another pupil called Dirk Van Deelen, bored four holes in the ceiling, right above Franz' bedstead, and through these lowered four strong ropes, which they fastened to the four corners of the bed, and then waited eagerly for their master's return home. Hals returned towards night in merry mood, and his pupils helped him to bed according to their wont, took away the light, and then crept quietly upstairs to set their plan in motion. As soon as Franz began his usual orison, 'Lord, take me up soon into Heaven,' they drew him and his bedstead gently up a little, whereupon Hals, half dazed, fancying that his prayer was being answered literally, altered his tone, and began to cry out lustily: 'Not so fast, dear Lord! not so fast!'"
Hardly able to restrain their mirth the mischievous young dogs quietly let their burden down, slipped off the ropes, and themselves slipped away, to tell their fellows the joke. "Franz," continues Weyerman, "did not discover the trick until several years after!"
The years 1631 and 1632 were lean years in Hals' output, but the year 1633, which gave us "Portrait of a Man" at the National Gallery—a fresh complexioned, easy going gentleman about thirty to forty years of age, in an astonishingly voluminous ruff, quite a bygone fashion in that year—saw a chef-d'œuvre de chefs-d'œuvres, another "Schutters-stuk," put up in the Stadhuis at Haarlem.
"[The St Adriaen's Doelen]," No. 2, consists of fourteen officers, nearly all of whom are gazing good-humouredly right out at their visitors, and inviting all and sundry to join in the conviviality. Each face is a pleasant character-study, for each man has dined well and is content.
Colonel Jan Claesz Van Loo is seated on the left, holding a stout walking-stick—probably he has contracted gout since his appearance in 1627! Seven of the officers hold halberds—a decided novelty in accessories, which adds greatly to the picturesque effect. One wonders whether anybody had whispered to Hals the news that Velazquez had painted his "Surrender of Breda" with halberds and lances galore! Anyhow Hals would not be caught napping by an intrusive Spaniard!
The Group is far and away the most easily arranged of all the Schutters-stuken. The waving foliage and smiling landscape predicate breeze and sun, for the gathering is al fresco in the gardens of Roosendaal, the Hampton Court of Haarlem. The officer seated upon the table is Lieutenant Hendrik Pot—a favourite pupil—a speaking likeness.
Fashions have changed, they are richer and more decorative with silken stitching and laced scarves. The colours, greys, greens, browns, and dull blues are softened by the leafy environment. "En plein air" is the cry of modern Impressionists, but here we have it, where, perhaps, we should not look for it. This is in truth one of the world's chief masterpieces, and the efforts its execution called forth told greatly upon its creator.
Certainly he went on painting, and probably he went on carousing too; but silence again settles down upon him, and a meagre list of fifteen signed and dated portraits completes his work until 1637.
We find him now not at Haarlem, but at Amsterdam; not drinking, but painting—painting what Dr. Bürgher, the art critic, asserts is "the most astounding picture of the Dutch School." Probably Hals frequently visited the capital of the chief province, there to see what other artists were doing, and to sample the pleasures of its convivial life.
His visit in 1657 was of considerable duration, for he was painting "The Officers of the Civic Guard" under their commander, Colonel Reynier Reaels. There are sixteen full-length, life-size figures, posed after the manner of the Haarlem Schutters-stuken. They are clad in dark-blue uniforms, with the exception of the Standard-bearer—a gorgeous individual in golden brown, with leggings, laced and bowed, his arms akimbo, bearing himself with such a swagger as only Franz Hals knew how to paint.
This splendid portrait group hangs at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, at no great distance from Rembrandt Van Rijn's "Night Watch," so we can take stock of both together.
It is not a little significant that Amsterdamers, famed for what the Tuscans used to call "il Spirito del Campanile," should have had to go to Haarlem for their man! Were there not painters on the spot, and what about Rembrandt, he was not very busy in 1637? No; no one could do this sort of thing so well as Hals.
In 1639 he completed his quintet of Schutters-stuken or Doelen—portrait groups in Haarlem Stadhuis; his patrons were once more "The Officers of St. Joris' Shooting Guild."
Here we are in the open with the wind swaying the unfurled banners and rustling the leaves of the trees. The rendezvous is the orchard of the Hofje Van Oud Alkemude de XII. Apostelen, with its garden-pavilion, in the tower of which Hals is said to have painted a Schutters-stuk; beyond are the Haarlem woods.
The Group consists of nineteen Officers, with Colonel Jan Van Loo. The men are arranged in two somewhat stiff lines—perhaps they all asked front places and paid well! With his usual modesty Hals has put himself in the back row, but in much better guise than his next neighbour, a distinctly blasé individual. They are all well-set-up men, and dressed in the new fashion, tending rather to effeminacy.
The atmosphere and illuminations are vibrant, but the colours are restrained, the shadows are grey, and the animation does not equal that of the 1633 Group. Perhaps Hals was degenerating with the passing age—certainly he was ageing.
However, he finished off his best decade with a remarkable little snapshot portrait, a fisher-lad of Katwyk. "De Strandlooper" he has called it; it hangs in Antwerp Museum. He saw the boy running up and down the dunes; he was an odd-looking bit of humanity.
"Sit down just where you are," said Hals, "fold your arms, and don't take your eyes off me." A rough drawing was soon knocked off, just to fix values, and then the master added, "Come along with me now to Haarlem, and half a Carolus guelder for you." Then he fixed the oddest of odd smiles, and the "Beach urchin" remains to prove that the old man, vigorous, had lost very little of his cunning after all.
The last twenty-five years of Hals' life were marked by experiences wholly unlike the circumstances of the preceding decade.
If between 1630-1640 he approached Velazquez and painted dignified magnates and others, with a brush dipped in gold and a palette of luminous colours, in the end of his days he was near Rembrandt with no less characteristic groups and individuals, and his hues are silvery and his shadows impressive.
The Regenten Stuken, the "Five Governors of the St. Elizabeth Almshouse" or Oudemaanenhuis, exposed in the Haarlem Stadhuis in 1641, might, for all the world, be the work of the great Amsterdam master, just as the latter's "Staalmeester's" of 1661 might be his.
The Group in question consists of five most serious and reverent city fathers, seated comfortably at their Board table. Not a bit of worldly conceit, not a decorative adjunct of any kind, adorns the composition, but it is a perfect achievement. The sombre black garments and steeple-crown hats have a lustre of their own, and, standing well out of the greyish-green wall behind, they throw up wonderfully facial expression and manual dexterity. The plain linen collars and well-starched cuffs tone down the ashen-red shadows upon the skin, and the clustering locks of long black hair, tinged with grey, form halos around the wrinkles.
