The Art of Frans Hals

I will call this a WIP for the time being. I may elaborate on this essay at a later date.

Born in Antwerp in 1582, then part of the Spanish Netherlands, Frans Hals is easily recognisable for his art style, comprising fast, directional brushstrokes which differentiated his art from the Dutch academic style, (think van der Helst).

Young Man with a Skull (c. 1626–1628)

How alertly Frans paints people after life? — Samuel Ampzing, c.1628¹

An anecdote goes:² when Van Dyck was about to leave for England in the service of Charles I, he first sought farewells to Frans Hals. In Haarlem, he went to his house, but had to look for him in the taverns, where he invariably sat until his pint was empty. He waited, kept his identity to himself, and when Hals finally appeared, told him only that he was a stranger with no time to spare and wished to have his portrait painted. Hals agreed without further inquiry, took whatever canvas was to hand, and set to work. Van Dyck kept up a little conversation during the sitting so as not to give himself away. When it was done, Hals asked him to stand back and judge it. Van Dyck praised it, then said, as if in passing: is this how one goes about painting? Could I not do it too? He picked up a blank canvas, put it on the easel, and sat Hals down.

Hals watched him prepare his palette and his brushes and saw at once that this was no novice. He still didn't think of Van Dyck; he decided it must be some other artist playing a trick, trying to make a name for himself. Van Dyck didn't take long. He asked Hals to stand and look. As soon as Hals saw the canvas he said: thou art Van Dyck, for no other person is able to do something like this. He embraced him and kissed him.

Van Dyck left with his still-wet portrait and pressed something into Hals' children's hands in payment. They didn't hold it long, for Hals drank it shortly after. Van Dyck tried hard to lure him to England, but Hals wouldn't hear of it: he was too attached to his drinking.

Van Dyck kept a high opinion of his art all the same, saying later that if Hals' pigments had been a little more delicate he would have been among the greatest masters, since no one matched him in that control of the brush by which, setting up a portrait, he could place the lights and darks in a single pass without correction.

Portrait of Nicolaes Hasselaer (c. 1627)

It was said he laid his portraits on thickly and let them merge softly, then returned with sharper brushwork, announcing: now the essence of the master must be introduced.

Copy of a lost self-portrait of Frans Hals

This anecdote recorded by Arnold Houbraken in 1718 conflated loose brushwork with a loose life. Hals applied new paint over layers that had not yet dried, which required immense precision; a mistake in this technique turns the surface to mud, and Hals avoided overworking his canvases by committing to initial brushstrokes. In The Laughing Cavalier (1624), he used this wet application to suggest the complex lace and gilded embroidery of the subject's sleeve. He did not paint every thread, but placed abrupt slashes of white and yellow over a dark ground. When viewed by the human eye, the picture comes together remarkably.

Before Hals, Dutch civic guard portraits resembled static class photographs, with rows of detached heads staring directly out of the canvas. Hals commandeered this style in 1616 with the Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company, organising the 12 officers around a table using intersecting diagonals, placing some figures in the foreground and pushing others back. He animated them with distinct tasks, depicting officers carving meat or holding raised glasses, and unified the composition through intersecting sightlines. He repeated this success in 1627 with a second painting of the same militia company, giving equal weight to the individual likenesses and the overall geometry of the composition.

Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company (1616)

His genre paintings allowed for even rougher execution. Malle Babbe (c. 1633) depicts a local Haarlem character laughing with an owl on her shoulder and a large pewter tankard in her hand. He used thick impasto to catch the light on the metal tankard, and blocked in her face with aggressive, visible strokes. The fractured brushwork suits her.

Malle Babbe (c. 1633)

His palette darkened in his final decade, and the prosperous, colourful citizens of his early career gave way to more austere figures. He painted The Regents of the Old Men's Almshouse (1664) using strict variations of black and muted white. The execution here is looser than any of his early work, but he retained control over the underlying anatomical structure of the faces and hands.

The Regents of the Old Men's Almshouse (1664)

He died in Haarlem in 1666 at 86, old when you consider his vices. By this time, the Dutch art market had abandoned his rough style in favour of the smooth, polished surfaces of painters like Gerrit Dou and Frans van Mieris. His reputation remained obscure until the 1860s, when Édouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh travelled to Haarlem to study his unblended brushstrokes. Van Gogh examined the late regents piece closely, and wrote to his brother Theo that Hals possessed 27 distinct shades of black.³