FRANS HALS. By Gerald S. Davies, M.A. George Bell and Sons.
On comparing the number of monographs that have appeared on other than Dutch artists with that of books in our possession treating of Dutch painters, we see that the latter have been allotted but a scanty measure in literature; indeed, one may go further and say that during the past twenty years, excepting Rembrandt and a few other great masters, no extensive and comprehensive work has been written on the old Dutch painters. For this neglect a very well-founded reason exists: the native art historians of the Netherlands are still collecting materials, and cannot as yet think of writing exhaustive books concerning their great masters; for they are much too well aware of the vast gaps that are still to be found in their knowledge. This is so in the case, among others, of Frans Hals, and it will remain so for many years to come; we must needs wait until all the records are accessible before being able to arrive at a definite knowledge of Hals’s personality. ¶ Mr. Davies has been deterred by no such considerations; he not only, with a ready pen, describes Hals’s life and works, but, thanks to the spacious manner in which he conceives his subject, finds occasion to indulge in digressions on old Dutch conditions, art and so forth, which might undoubtedly possess an interest for English readers if they were correct, but that, unfortunately, is far from being always the case. ¶ After treating in his first two chapters of the ‘Rise of a National Art’ and ‘Holland and its Art in the Seventeenth Century’ the author collects the few known facts concerning Hals’s life in Chapter III, and endeavours to draw a conclusion touching his personality. We quite admit that legend may have represented Hals as being a more dissolute man than he actually was. Nevertheless, one who ill-treated his wife as he did can really not have had any particularly aristocratic manners. It would be better for us to say that we do not know enough about his life to be able to white-wash it of the few disagreeable facts that have been handed down to us. There can be no doubt, however, that he was a Bohemian, as Mr. Davies rightly characterizes him. ¶ The following chapters are devoted entirely to Hals’s artistic career and works; those preserved at Haarlem of course occupying a great place. The description of these is a lively one, and is evidently based upon a repeated examination. There are a good index, bibliography, useful indications such as the approximate dates of Hals’s life and of his principal paintings, etc. In a word, the writer has industriously brought together all that he has been able to ascertain touching his subject from books and pictures. But there is one matter in which Mr. Davies has not succeeded, and that is the producing of a critical work. It is true that he himself expressly says this as regards the catalogue,[45] but he constantly makes the same mistakes in the text itself. This is an exceedingly dangerous standpoint; for, thanks to it, so soon as one sets to work on a scientific basis, one finds him, for instance, describing two pictures (Illustrations Nos. 1 and 54) as Portraits of the Painter which do not represent Hals at all, while, again, the Portrait of Admiral de Ruyter (Illustration No. 55) is not a picture of that admiral. ¶ In the same way, the catalogue—which, from the very nature of the standpoint of the writer, is incomplete—contains childish mistakes, which are due to a lack of adequate critical knowledge. For to say of the Hille Bobbe with a young man smoking behind her, merely that it is ‘generally recognized as the work of F. Hals the son’ surely denotes an excess of caution, considering that it is established beyond all doubt that this picture was, in fact, painted by the son, and therefore it ought not to have been included in the catalogue. Some of the paintings in English collections which we missed in the catalogue we were fortunate enough to find mentioned in the ‘List of Pictures which have appeared ... in the Winter Exhibitions ... at Burlington House,’ which is inserted after the ‘List of Works.’ But these data are also, we regret to say, uncritical. 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. There are more of this sort, and we are sorry not to find them mentioned in Mr. Davies’s book. ¶ We must deliver ourselves of one or two further remarks, not from any love of fault-finding, but to remove mistaken ideas. The picture mentioned on p. 22, which is traditionally, and by Mr. Davies, supposed to represent Hals’s workshop, was painted by Michiel Sweerts, and has nothing to do with Hals’s workshop. Nor is what the author observes touching Hals’s manner of painting (p. 124) quite correct. Hals slowly perfected his technique, proceeding along a road which is quite easily traced. It is true that he underpainted a considerable number of his pictures, but there are also many, very many indeed, which he finished at once, in the wet paint, without the least underpainting. One of the best examples of the latter is the Portrait of a Man, in Lord Spencer’s collection, which is at present in the Guildhall Exhibition. ¶ Mr. Davies’s book has been very handsomely printed and produced, and is filled with mostly satisfactory illustrations. It is to be regretted that the contents of the book are not more worthy of its format; as a critical guide to the art of Frans Hals it is wholly untrustworthy.
W. M.