THE JOLLY TOPER FRANS HALS
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM
motive be as impersonal as Hals’s. The latter’s point of view was objective, intent on seeing and rendering the facts of things as they confronted him; but, unlike many objective painters whose technique presents merely a correct and efficient record, because their own mind is little more than a mirror, reflecting mechanically what is in front of it, Hals’s mind was an active vitalizer of the impressions that it received. The distinction corresponds pretty completely to the difference which may exist between two lecturers. One will give a careful presentation of his subject which we listen to with interest, and, if we have confidence in his ability, with a willingness to accept his conclusions; but another will do more. Because of the gusto with which he attacks his subject, the genial, expansive outlook with which he views it, the broadly human spirit in which he treats it, even because of the tone of voice and gesture of body with which he lends color and warmth to his remarks, he will so stimulate his audience that they cease to be mere listeners. Their own brains are at work; they become active participators in the train of thought. It is in this kind of way that Hals’s technique affects one. It is the product of so ample and genial an outlook, so teems with gusto, and manifests itself with such an assurance of conviction and so vigorously facile a style, that it stimulates the imagination. In the presence of his portraits one is no passive spectator, but aroused to an activity of appreciation.
I have spoken of imagination; and I mean to imply a twofold exercise thereof: that Hals himself exhibited imagination and kindles it also in the spectator. To some people it may seem to be an abuse of the word to speak of imagination, in the case of an artist so content to be occupied with the objective traits of his subject as Hals was. But they overlook the fact that, while an artist may exercise no imagination in the choice of a subject, he may display a great deal in the rendering of it. He may not give reins to his imagination as Rembrandt did, peering below the surface of things, exploring the hidden recesses of the human soul; he may, on the contrary, be satisfied to be an able craftsman, handling the material presented to him, intent only on giving to it form and character; yet, even so, he will exhibit what one may call a technical imagination. And it is precisely this which characterizes the technique of Hals. It appears in the arrangement of his compositions, especially in the group-portraits, where it takes the form of a superior kind of inventiveness, which is but a phase of imagination. This gift abounds in the corporation pictures at Haarlem. The problem of disposing so many figures in such a way that each shall have its due share of individual emphasis, and yet that the whole group may have, on the one hand, a naturalness and spontaneity of suggestion, and, on the other, a reasonable amount of artistic unity, was one to try to its utmost capacity an artist’s inventiveness. Hals was the first to solve it; and, while other artists profited by his example, none could attain to the completeness of his success. You may be thinking of Rembrandt’s Syndics of the Cloth Guild; but the latter’s composition contains only six figures, whereas in Hals’s masterpiece, The Reunion of the Officers of the Archers of St. Andrew, there are fourteen. For a just comparison you should rather choose Van der Helst’s great composition in the Rijks Museum, The Banquet of the Civic Guard, an amazing example of inventiveness, but lacking in the suppleness, spontaneity, and gusto that Hals exhibits.
But the latter’s imagination is not alone displayed in the management of intricate compositions. It is displayed also in the treatment of each figure and in his pictures of single individuals; manifesting itself in two ways, both in the way he has seen his subject and in the way he has rendered it. And first for the imaginative quality of his vision. It is concerned with externals, or at least with traits of character that lie close to the surface; but with what an alertness it has observed the idiosyncrasy of each person, and how completely it has comprehended it! This is more than objective clear-sightedness; it implies a capacity to reconstruct the retinal impression, and to clothe it with actual living consciousness, that involves a marked exercise of the creative faculty of imagination. If you still doubt it, again compare Hals with Van der Helst, next to himself the most accomplished of the painters of corporation pictures, and the verdict concerning the latter’s work will surely be that by comparison it is prosy. At least that is the word that seems to me to express the difference, and it conveys the suggestion that the work is merely objective, unvitalized by the imaginative faculty.
Further, observe how Hals treats the costumes and the accompaniments of still-life in his pictures. He has not merely seen them; he has felt them, realized in his imagination their distinctive character and their relation to the whole impression. For those were brave days in Holland, succeeding the expiration of the truce; an underlying bravery of spirit and an external bravery of demeanor and manners characterized the life of the burghers. It was not for nothing that their trade had absorbed the finest weavers and artificers in the world; they decked themselves and their families in the costliest fabrics of their looms and loaded their tables with objects of fine plate. These things were more to them than vanities; they were the expression of the proud preëminence they had won. Now it is the spirit and the meaning of all this that Hals was so skilful in rendering. Van der Helst’s displays of costume rather suggest that “fine feathers make fine birds,” while the suggestion of Hals is of fine fellows appropriately bedecked with finery. His imagination, in fact, had caught the enthusiasm of the time and discovered its interpretation. And, further still, apart from the relation which this beauty of display bore to the temper of the times, it needs imagination in an artist to interpret the beauty of a fabric or an object of still-life. Mere imitation of its appearance is not sufficient. Such merely represents the appearance; it does not interpret it. The distinction will be clear to any one who is a student of photography and has seen the still-life studies of flowers and fruit and glassware by Baron A. de Meyer. In them the crude notion of merely representing appearances has been superseded by the desire to make the picture express the enthusiasm which their beauty has inspired. The result is an interpretation of the sentiment of beauty. Such, too, is Hals’s rendering of the silks and velvets and lawn ruffs, the dishes and
