Frans Hals
1580 – 1666
Frans Hals was a Dutch Baroque painter during the Dutch Golden Age. As a portrait painter, considered by some as second in the Netherlands only to Rembrandt, he displayed extraordinary talent and quickness in his art.
Hals was born in Antwerp. In 1585, after Antwerp fell to Spain in the Eighty Years’ War his family moved to Haarlem in the Northern Low Countries, where he lived the remainder of his life. His first master at Antwerp was probably Van Noort. When Hals was 27, he became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, and then entered the atelier of painter and historian Carel van Mander. He soon gradually emancipated himself from traditional portrait conventions.
Although Hals’ work was in demand throughout his life, he worked as an art dealer and restorer. Hals is best known for his portraits, mainly of wealthy citizens. His ‘breakthrough’ came in 1616, with the life-size group portrait, “The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company”. He was a Baroque painter who practiced an intimate realism with a radically free approach. His pictures illustrate the various strata of society; banquets or meetings of officers, sharpshooters, guildsmen, admirals, generals, burgomasters, merchants, lawyers, and clerks, itinerant players and singers, gentlefolk, fishwives and tavern heroes.
In group portraits, such as the “Archers of St. Hadrian”, Hals captures each character in a different manner. The faces are not idealized and are clearly distinguishable, with their personalities revealed in a variety of poses and facial expressions.
Hals was fond of daylight and silvery sheen, while Rembrandt used golden glow effects based upon artificial contrasts of low light in immeasurable gloom. Both men were painters of touch, but of touch on different keys – Rembrandt was the bass, Hals the treble. Hals seized, with rare intuition, a moment in the life of his subjects. What nature displayed in that moment he reproduced thoroughly in a delicate scale of color, and with mastery over every form of expression. He became so clever that exact tone, light and shade, and modeling were obtained with a few marked and fluid strokes of the brush. His style changed throughout his life. Paintings of vivid color were gradually replaced by pieces where one color dominated.
Frans influenced his brother Dirck Hals (1591-1656), who was also a painter. Additionally, four of his sons followed in his path and became painters. Of the master’s numerous family members only Frans Hals the Younger is notable.
Frans Hals died in Haarlem in 1666. His reputation waned after his death and for two centuries he was held in such poor esteem that some of his paintings were sold at auction for a few pounds or even shillings. Starting at the middle of the 19th century his prestige rose again.
