FRANS HALS
Although the great Dutch painter, Frans Hals (1580?–1666) was born at Antwerp, his parents were natives of Haarlem, whither he removed about 1600, and where he settled for the remainder of his eventful, irregular, and improvident career. This lusty and unromantic master by his forceful characterisation, his rapid wielding of his brush, and his frank realism, in a few years transformed the earlier portrait-making of Holland, and the rendering of the commonplace and obvious likeness of an individual, as seen in the works of Moreelse and others, into the region of great art. He was by about a quarter of a century the senior of Rembrandt, who is the greatest genius among Dutch painters, and developed his art on logical lines. It is, however, necessary to know the outstanding facts of his personal history, the fluctuating circumstances under which he worked, and the grinding poverty of his latest period. Perhaps no other painter in the whole range of art was so affected by his environment as Hals.
PLATE XXVII.—FRANS HALS
(1580?–1666)
DUTCH SCHOOL
No. 2384.—THE GIPSY GIRL
(La Bohémienne)
She wears a red dress, which is open at the neck; she smiles as she turns her eyes to the right; half-length figure.
Painted in oil on canvas.
2 ft. 6 in. × 2 ft. 3 in. (0·76 × 0·68.)
Whether he was a pupil of Cornelis Cornelissen, Hendrick Goltzius, and Karel van Mander (the Dutch Vasari), is not known with any certainty, and no picture painted by him earlier than 1613, when he may have been thirty-three years of age, is known to-day. Early in the year 1616, when he painted his famous Banquet of the Officers of the St. Joris Shooting Guild, one of his early masterpieces still preserved in the small gallery at Haarlem, he was summoned before the Burgomaster of the “town of the tulip,” and reprimanded for his cruelty to his first wife. Exactly a year later he married a second time, and as the years went on he became the father of at least six sons who adopted the profession of the painter but earned no permanent success. The Louvre possesses no example of his Doelen-pieces of archer-groups which won him his earliest fame in his own country, but is fortunate enough to contain the famous Gipsy Girl (No. 2384, [Plate XXVII.]), which alone would have earned for him the title of “the master of the laugh.” It passed through the Ménars sale in 1792 for 301 livres. The three pictures of the Beresteyn family were bought for £4000 in 1884, when his paintings were not as highly prized as they are to-day. They give an excellent idea of the virility his art had attained by about 1629. The best of these is the Portrait of Nicolaes van Beresteyn (No. 2386), which is inscribed, “Aetat suae 40. 1629.” His hands are superbly painted; while the companion Portrait (No. 2387) of his wife is equally striking. The large and imposing Portrait-Group of the Beresteyn Family (No. 2388) is marred by the excessive use in places of a strong red, and has been enlarged by the addition down the right side of the canvas of a strip about fourteen inches broad, but yet shows a certain felicity of grouping, and a joyous and exuberant outlook. The Portrait, of René Descartes, the French Philosopher (No. 2383) is so simple in treatment and so easy in pose, that it makes an instant appeal to the student. Another Portrait of Descartes (No. 78), by Sébastien Bourdon, is in this gallery, and a third was in the Arsène Houssaye collection. The Portrait of a Lady in a Black Dress (No. 2385, [Plate XXVIII.]) is unaffected and lifelike, while the subtle and hasty brushing in of the gloves could only have been done by a great painter. It seems to have been generally overlooked that a study for this picture is in the collection of Lord Ronald Gower, and has for some time past been on loan to the FitzWilliam Museum, Cambridge. In the study, however, the artist had not yet thought of the gloves.
In 1654, Hals had to appear before a public notary of Haarlem at the instance of his landlord, who sued him for debt. The great Dutch painter in his testimony affirmed that his only possessions were two pictures by Vermander and Van Heemskerck, and three by himself and one of his sons, as well as three mattresses and bolsters, a cupboard and a table! The Louvre exhibits no pictorial record of Hals’s latest phase, when he was deserted by his friends, neglected by art patrons, and no longer possessed any inner moral support.
The colouring of his early portraits is vigorous, the tone deep, and the execution careful; gradually he employs richer colouring, subordinates the local colours, and becomes broader in treatment. From about 1650 his olive-greens gradually take on a more ash-grey hue, until we are inclined to the belief that if the master had been able to dispense with colour altogether, he would have willingly done so. It is then that the colours on his palette, like the outer world, became grey and black for him.
PLATE XXVIII.—FRANS HALS
(1580?–1666)
DUTCH SCHOOL
No. 2385.—PORTRAIT OF A LADY IN A BLACK DRESS
(Portrait de Femme)
A middle-aged woman wearing a black dress, with white collar, cuffs and cap, is seen at three-quarter length, standing and turned three-quarters to the left; in her hands, which are superposed, she holds her gloves.
Painted in oil on canvas.
3 ft. 3½ in. × 2 ft. 7½ in. (1·00 × 0·80.)
This great master of the brush some time before his death had to avail himself of poor relief granted by the municipality of Haarlem, and after his death, in 1666, his widow received an allowance of fourteen sous a week! Such was the tragic end of one of the most accomplished of portrait painters in the whole range of art.