HALS, FRANS (c. 1581/85–1666)

HALS, FRANS (c. 1581/85–1666), Dutch painter. Born in Antwerp, Hals emigrated to Haarlem with his family before 1591. There, he learned his trade from the painter, theorist, and historian Karel van Mander (1548–1606) prior to van Mander's death in 1606. As Hals did not enter the painters' guild in Haarlem until 1610, it is possible that he trained with, or worked as a journeyman for, an additional master in the interim. Shortly before joining the guild, Hals married Anneke Harmensdochter, but was widowed in 1615. Two years later, Hals wedded Lysbeth Reyniers, with whom he raised fourteen children from both marriages. Perhaps in part to ease the strain of supporting his large family, Hals taught an unusually large number of pupils, many of whom went on to enjoy accomplished careers. Yet despite painting actively until the end of his life, Hals required subsistence from the Old Men's Almshouse in Haarlem, whose regents he painted in 1664, before dying destitute in 1666.

During his long career Hals painted individual portraits, primarily of the Haarlem elite; group portraits of the local militia officers and regents of charitable institutions; and single figure genre paintings. In the 1610s and 1620s, Hals produced genre imagery and portraits concurrently. His portraits from this period were highly finished and crafted in fine detail, while his genre images were much more roughly executed. Hals's pendants of Jacob Pietersz Olijcan and Aletta Hanemans from 1625 show precisely rendered embroidered damask patterning and elegantly transcribed lace borders at both the cuff and the collar. In contrast, the allegorical representation of hearing, Boy Holding a Flute (Hearing), (1626–1628; Staatliches Museum, Schwerin) displays a summary description of the youth's garments. Here, Hals employed broad sweeps rather than delicate lines to mark the white cuff, and the left shoulder between collar and jerkin is so roughly painted that the anatomical structure blurs into a series of juxtaposed swatches of color. When he devoted himself entirely to portraiture (from the late 1630s onward), Hals increasingly favored constructing his paintings from assemblages of unblended brushstrokes. In Claes Duyst van Voorhout (c. 1638; Metropolitan Museum, New York) Hals captured the play of light on the sitter's gray jacket by layering short horizontal jabs of white and light yellow pigments rather than blending his brushwork to craft supple color gradations, as he had in his earlier portraits. By the 1660s, Hals's Portrait of a Man (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) presents the sitter's red kimono as a nearly flat surface of frenetic brushwork that shows little concern for the delineation of the body beneath it. Though not as rough as the sleeve, Hals composed the man's face as a patchwork of largely unmodulated color on which shadow and highlight are set side by side but not blended together, leaving each individual touch exposed. Unlike the works of his contemporaries that exhibited meticulous surfaces of seamlessly woven brushwork, Hals's late portraits recall the sketchy appearance of his earlier genre paintings.

Hals offered his viewers a naturalistic yet artful manner. As the historian Theodorus Schrevelius wrote in 1648, "His paintings are imbued with such force and vitality that he seems to surpass nature herself with his brush. This is seen in all his portraits . . . which are colored in such a way that they seem to live and breathe" (Schrevelius, p. 383). Hals's distinct manner, seen, for example, in his sketchy contours, heightened the sense of the sitters' activity, capturing not only his subjects' appearance but also their vivacity. In his group portraits, such as The Officers of the St. Hadrian Civic Guard from 1627 (Frans Halsmuseum, Haarlem), Hals further activated these pieces by dispersing the bustle across the canvas through a series of uniquely posed and engaged sitters. In both his group and individual portraits Hals's unblended, broad strokes also exhibited the artist's masterful facility in handling paint. It is highly likely that seventeenth-century audiences perceived Hals's flourishes as marks of his virtuosity. In this way, Hals's paintings could have been appreciated both as representations of individuals and as objects of art.

Regard for Hals's paintings plummeted throughout the eighteenth century as his rough manner clashed with the period's more refined aesthetic. It was not until the late nineteenth century that appreciation for Hals's work was resurrected. At that time, painters like Manet and Van Gogh perceived Hals's style to be highly individualized and thus modeled their own approaches upon his direct relationship to his sitters and admired his visible, bravura brushwork. This emulation of Hals by pioneering artists demonstrates the important role that Hals played in the construction of modern conceptions of art and artistry.

HALS, FRANS (c. 1581/85–1666)

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