One old lady had for many a long day taken his fancy, not that she was comely, sober, or fair spoken, quite the reverse, nevertheless her striking play of features and the wrinkling of her leathery skin had an occult fascination for Franz.
They called her "[Hille Bobbe]," but her name was Aletta or Alle Bol or Bollij; and she lived in a hovel by the Fish-market. Nobody ever got the better of old Hille, but she let everybody know what she thought of him and his!
At Lille is a "Laughing Hussy," painted by Hals in 1645; at Berlin is the old lady with her tankard and an owl, done in 1650; and at Dresden the same viele deern is scolding a yokel, who is smoking over her stall of unboiled lobsters, 1652 (?). They are all three most simply painted in black and grey, and just faint traces of ochre and red. The deep shadows point to a meagre palette and a brush worn down, but the result is striking and original. Nobody knows what the owl had to do with the old lady, probably a painters' joke at the model's expense.
In ten more years Franz Hals signed and dated no more than ten pictures. Was he idle? Was he ill? Was he dissolute? We cannot say; we have no data to go upon. The next note we have is an alarm signal, for, in 1652, one Jan Ykess, a baker, obtained a warrant whereby he sued Hals for two hundred Carolus guilders on account of comestibles supplied to him and his wife. A distress was issued, and the forced sale of three thin mattresses and bolsters, a ricketty armoire, and an old oak-table, with five oil paintings, barely sufficed to clear the bill.
Other creditors, and there were not a few, got nothing; apparently there were no other assets. But two years later Hals gave his butcher of "The Merry Trio," a painting by Jan Razet, "St. John the Baptist preaching," by way of compensation.
This is indeed a sad revelation, and its sadness is intensified by the apparent want of filial piety on the part of Franz' sons and daughters. They were all living, and, except Pieter, domiciled in Haarlem. Only Maria was unmarried. All were in good circumstances. Nicolaes, "Vinder" in 1662, had been a member of the Corporation since 1655. Why they did nothing to assist their parents in their distress nobody has recorded. There is no note of family feuds: perhaps Franz' pride refused natural assistance.
In 1655, and again in 1660, Hals painted and dated many portraits, as though he was forced to do something to keep the wolf from the door. Many of these are remarkable, not only as the work of an old man, but as exhibitions of new methods. "René Descartes," at the Louvre, and "Tyman Oosdorp," at Berlin—reminiscent perhaps of "Jan Hornebeeck of Leyden," at Brussels, painted in 1648—have fixed unhappy faces, all in dull black and grey, with dark shadows suffusing everything. Surely they are reflections of the painter's darkening view of life in grumbling, unmerry mood.
The clouds, however, appear to have been at least partially dissipated, for in the latter year we have a smiling face again, and, perhaps, one of the last which smiled on "Hals of Antwerp!" The Schlapphut, "The Slouch Hat," now at Cassel, is a real chef-d'œuvre. 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. In the spring of 1662 the old man applied to the Municipal Council for assistance. His plea was not in vain, for, with characteristic good-fellowship, a dole was immediately forthcoming—fuel and aliment—and with them a benefaction of 150 Carolus guilders (circa £26).
Old Hals could still, vigorous old fellow that he was, hold his palette and his brush—and to good use too—nor did he quite lack for patrons. Upon the Board of the Oudevrouwenhuis (Old Women's Alms House) were several old chums of his who, in solemn conclave met, agreed unanimously to commission the aged master to paint two portrait-groups—one of themselves, and the other of the Lady Governors of the Béguinage for old and reduced gentlewomen, which Mijnheer Nicolaes Van Beresteyn had founded in 1611.