OLD DUTCH AND FLEMISH MASTERS

frans hals (1580?-1666)

 

 

Portrait of René Descartes

In the fifteenth century there was no art in Holland that distinctly spoke for the land or the people. The nation had not yet declared itself. The Burgundian dukes were in power, and, though encouraging commerce, letters, and arts, they were bestowing most of their favors upon Flanders. Holland was merely a northern province treated with some contempt. In art, the Van Eycks, with the schools of Bruges and Brabant, led the way, and the painters at the north did little more than follow them. In the sixteenth century the Flemish painters, especially those of the Antwerp school, fell under foreign influence. Their own art was apparently not to their taste, for shoals of artists put off to Italy, there to study, assimilate, and imitate the subjects and methods of the Italian masters of the Renaissance. The example of Flanders was contagious in Holland, and again the northern painters followed. But toward the end of the sixteenth century Holland threw off the Spanish yoke, gaining thereby political freedom; and shortly afterward her painters threw off the Flemish-Italian yoke, and became Dutch in method and spirit. In the last quarter of the century Mierevelt, Ravesteyn, and Frans Hals were born, and with them, at the opening of the seventeenth century, began the great period of Dutch art.

A Man Holding a Skull

The apprenticeship to Flanders and Italy had not been wasted time or labor. The Dutch had learned color and handling from the one, drawing and some composition from the other; so that, almost at the start, we find the accomplished craftsman, the man skilled in methods and materials, the painter versed in form, color, and handling. Frans Hals is one of the earliest, and, perhaps, the most remarkable instance of the craftsman in all Dutch art. It is not often that the early man of a school speaks the latest and most mature language of that school. The idea is usually the first strong utterance; the style is the result of improved training and is more often seen in the late representatives. But Frans Hals reversed all this. He was practically the founder of Dutch painting, yet he realized to the full the Dutch idea and subject, and that, too, with a style that is astonishing in its cultured maturity. In method and in manner, in technical expression, and in the skill of the craftsman, he stands at the head of his school. There never was a better painter in any school.

Petrus Scriverius

Hals was primarily a master workman, and it has been said that he was nothing beyond that; but this latter statement should be accepted with some qualifications. It is true that he had not the reflective, the speculative, the romantic temperament. He was a seer and a recorder rather than a thinker; a man devoted apparently to the beautiful in the material rather than in the intellectual, yet far removed from the mere mechanical realist of cold facts. Some natures reveal their artistic feeling in what they say, and others reveal the same feeling in how they say it. We see this continually exemplified in modern poetry, where the artist in language is quite as apparent as the poetic thinker; and modern painting is filled with painters who are poetic only in their means of expression. Frans Hals belonged to this class. He was a painter of great power, and, withal, of great sensitiveness and feeling in the pure art of painting. His work shows to us the shrewd observer of fitness and character, the learned student of tone and relation, the harmonist of full frank colors, the rhapsodist in all that relates to technical expression. The finer qualities of the man came to the surface through his eyes and finger-tips; but it was no common realist's eye that perceived the beautiful harmonies of silvery whites and blacks in the regents' pictures at Haarlem; it was no mere workman's mind that grouped and held together those great pictures.by giving due force and character to each figure in light, in value, and in color; it was no time-serving, mechanical hand that drew and painted them so truly and yet so easily. Frans Hals was something more than a mere technician. He was a great artist.

Portrait of Catharina Both van der Eem (1589-1666)

A man's true nature appears in his work, but unfortunately Frans Hals's biographers have not studied his work sufficiently. In its stead they have substituted his subjects, and the few reported facts of his life, to prove that he was a very material soul, and consequently must have produced a material art. It is said that he was a man of free habits, a frequenter of the tavern, a brawler of police-court fame, who beat one wife, wronged a second, and finally in his age became dependent upon town charity. Such is the record we have of the man, a record preserving his (perhaps) occasional vices, and recording not one of his virtues. Shall we conclude, then, that the man had no virtues, that he was of low tastes, and that the police docket is but a sample page of the man's whole mental and artistic make-up? It is a conclusion too often and too hastily reached, and it is one that his pictures absolutely deny and confute. They do not show that he was gross or beer-sodden in either mind or hand. They show that he was a man of individual and positive view, a painter of great freedom and strength, and a colorist of infinite charm and delicacy.

Portrait of William Commynes

His subjects, indeed, might be regarded, in a popular sense, as unselect. They were of the common stock from which all the Dutch painters drew, and had nothing whatever to do with the ideal. They were things seen, not imagined; people of Holland, not people of the air. He was peculiarly fond of the bluff, robust type, and he painted it in a fresh, vigorous manner to complement the character. Even his portraits are of this type. They have health and good spirits, substance and shadow, as in nature; but again they have little of the ideal, or what is called in portraiture "character painting," about them. Hals followed his model, and painted only what was apparent. His well-fed burghers probably showed little more than physical life, and he was not the man to paint false character into a face. He was not a Van Dyck, painting scholars, lords, and princes; and he had little use for the intellectual gaze, the refined face, and the lordly air. Possibly he never had a chance to paint men of noble mien; and yet it is more probable that his sympathies went out to people of his own kind, and that he painted the frankly human because he believed in it and loved it for its truth's sake. His other subjects would seem to indicate this. He is always free, vivacious, hearty, full of animal spirits. Sometimes he lightly jests, as in the portraits of himself and wife at Amsterdam; sometimes he is whimsical and boisterous as with his Fools and Jolly Men; and sometimes he is sober, sedate, calm, as in his Haarlem pictures. Good-natured, candid, and honest, he is always pleasing and never frivolous. Whatever may be his subject, he is serious in its handling. And that brings us around to our first conclusion, that the real feeling and power of the painter lay in his methods of expression. What he said was often coarse; but his manner of saying was eloquent, cultured, refined. His was the poetry of rhythmical color, light, and handling.

Portrait of a Dutch Family

As a technician, Hals had few equals, and it is hardly extravagant to say that he had no superior. Velasquez and Rubens were different, and as artists they were greater; but as pure painters they were not more individual or more certain than was Hals. In drawing and modeling he was remarkable for giving the truth of mass and bulk in the physical presence. Flesh, bone, brawn, and weight he could translate with convincing precision. This effect he gained not by line drawing. He was not a man of clear outline like Holbein. His modeling was effected by regarding the exact relations of color tones. The black hat and white ruff of the "Jolly Man", engraved by Mr. Cole, do not hold their place by virtue of their outline or rim, but by virtue of their mass in black or white, each mass exactly true in value, and properly related to the head and to each other. This scrupulous regard for values enabled him to paint with flat tones, and thereby suggest modeling without actually giving it. The black hat has a crown to it, though it is not seen; the brim circles the head, though at the back it is only indicated. The variation in the shades of black gives modeling, and suggests what is not shown. In this flat painting Hals anticipated Manet and all the Whistlerians by two hundred years; and for this very feature he is greatly admired by the moderns of today. It speaks strongly for the genius of the man that he did not learn or appropriate this from any master or school. He originated it.

A Young Man in a Large Hat

In the handling of light Hals was quite different from Rembrandt and the painters who were born a few years after him. He did not display it in spots upon the canvas, or break the continuity of the picture by several focuses. There is nothing forced about his illumination. The light came not from the sky, but chiefly from the figures themselves, as was the manner of treatment employed by the great Italians. The banquet piece that Mr. Cole has engraved illustrates this. The ruffs and sashes and faces are shown to be highest in light, and in comparison the windows, from which the light would naturally come, are dark. This is arbitrary lighting, but Hals is not to be blamed for it. It was the painters' practice of the time,—a conventionality, and yet handled by Hals with great regard for the tonal truth of the artifice. His distribution was even, uniform, well-regulated, so that he was not compelled to sacrifice figures at the sides or back, nor colors under shadow. In color he was at first a little florid, and perhaps lacking in depth and delicacy; but he soon began to employ a richer and more mellow palette, upon which all colors seemed to be placed — orange, red, blue, green, brown, gray, black. These he used with great purity and tenderness, showing always the sense of a colorist in giving the proper fitness, resonance, and relationship of colors, under light and under shadow. Late in life his hand failed him, but not his eye. The colors became subdued, and he grew fond of rich blacks and pearly whites flecked with gray. He was less sparkling, less varied, but even more refined and harmonious. He now threw his remaining strength upon the general tone-effect, and gained a charm of sobriety. It was the final, perhaps the highest, step as a colorist in the painter's life, but it is marred by the feeling that it was in measure a makeshift to hide the inequalities of a failing hand.

Portrait of Isaac Massa

It is not wonderful that the hand of a person of eighty-four should forget its cunning. The man, physically, was sunk in twilight; the feebleness of old age was upon him; but in the days of his strength there never was a more positive and powerful brush-man. His handling is of superb freedom and dash. A staccato quality in it lends to energy and vivacity. He did not often indulge in the long serpentine sweep of Rubens. He used little oil, and his pigment was not so fluid as that of the great Fleming. He modeled by spots and areas, painted often in patches, and occasionally dashed in a hat or cloak with a large, full-loaded brush. He knew almost infallibly just where to begin, just how far to carry, just when to stop. He never tortured, or dragged, or thumbed; he struck swiftly and accomplished his aim at one blow. We gain no idea of correction or emendation from his work. It looks to be done once and finally, and that, too, with the ease of a hand that does not pause to deliberate, but dashes forward, fully conscious of its touch and certain of its result. Hals is again strictly original in all this. His brush-work, so much admired and studied by modern painters, followed no tradition, and was not learned or imitated from others. It was invented, created, improvised by Hals to suit his conceptions and characters, and is a positive stamp of his own individuality. It is in itself, aside from the other qualities he possessed, sufficient to mark him as a technician of extraordinary resources, and a painter of prodigious power.

His works are scattered through all the galleries of Europe. There are good examples at Berlin, at Dresden, at Paris, at Amsterdam; but perhaps the most complete showing of the painter's work is to be seen in the corporation and regents' pictures of the Haarlem Museum. Here he appears from his thirty-sixth to his eighty-fourth year, in eight large canvases, containing groups of life-sized figures. The first picture, painted in 1616, shows him sharp and abrupt; he models with difficulty; the hands and heads are somewhat heavy, though strong in character; the coloring is over-warm. Eleven years later he painted the group of portraits Mr. Cole has engraved, and we see him almost, if not quite, in his prime. His color is more brilliant, yet more delicate; he has mastered modeling; the heads are singularly individual; his light is equal in distribution; his brush-work charming in its freedom. In 1633 he painted the "Assembly of Officers of St. Andrew". He is now surely at his height, with a gamut of wonderfully brilliant color. He uses all hues and shades of hues, mingling them together in a glowing harmony. He has overcome every technical difficulty of art, and his brush is intelligent to the last degree. To quote Fromentin, he has now "as much taste as Van Dyck, as much skilful execution as Velasquez." He is positive, clear, sure, convincing. His zenith has been reached. The next picture, painted in 1641, shows us a change. Hals has become more sober in his colors, using large quantities of black, gray, and brown. He is still virile and impressive, and there is great richness in his somber palette. In 1664 there is a deepening and an intensifying of this sobriety, as shown in the last two pictures of the series, painted when Hals was very old. Feebleness is stamped upon the canvases. His colors are still pure, refined, sober almost to sadness, but his once unerring hand has deserted him. He dashes here and there, but is ineffectual. He no longer draws surely, but he still retains a sense of relation. As though conscious of his failing powers, he seeks to cover up his errors by spreading a tonal quality like a veil over the whole scene. The result is both admirable and pitiful. It records the last impression of an eye as sensitive as any that ever received light, the last effort of a hand as masterful as any that ever grasped painter's brush.

 

"The Mulatto"	The Gypsy Girl	Boy with flute

 

Family Group in a Landscape

Jonker Ramp and Sweetheart	Peeckelhaering	The Rommel Pot Player

NOTES

FRANS HALS is one of the very few Dutchmen who cannot be thoroughly appreciated or studied outside the towns which claim them. To know him one must go to Haarlem, where he occupies an eminence similar to that of Rembrandt in Amsterdam, though with the advantage of being far more comprehensively illustrated. There, in the museum of the town hall, he is represented by eight large canvases varying in length from eight to thirteen feet, the figures of which are life-size. They are corporation and regent pieces, ostensibly portraits of officers of the orders of St. Andrew and of St. George, and of the lady managers and governors of the hospital for old men and women, and of the Elizabeth Hospital. They are arranged in chronological order, appertaining to the periods of the artist's life and embracing his long career. It is a rare treat to see an array of masterpieces, imposing, well lighted, and placed at a convenient height for examination! affording at a glance fifty years of an artist's labor. The first of the series is of the year 1616, and shows Hals to us at the age of thirty-six; the last, of 1664, shows him to us at the extreme age of eighty-four, two years before his death. These corporation pieces were much the fashion in those days, and form a not inconsiderable feature of Dutch art. Frans Hals and Rembrandt have done the finest things of this kind, and their works are not merely portrait groups, but pictures. The example I have engraved is one of the best of the series, and displays Frans Hals in full flower. It is of the year 1627, when he was forty-seven years old. It represents the officers of St. Andrew at a banquet. Each individual may be identified, since he is numbered in the painting, and his name is affixed to the bottom of the frame. I did not engrave the numbers, for the names are of little or no account at the present day; they have, in fact, all merged in the one name of Frans Hals. The painting is in a warm, fresh gray; the background is brownish. The various coats of arms in stained glass are indicated with delicacy and precision against the outside background of foliage. The scarfs are tawny, orange, or tender blue; the rufls are white, and in them the artist employs touches of the pure pigment. The clothes are principally of dark stuff figured with embroidery upon the surface, the detail broadly yet delicately indicated. The hands are fine, and all well individualized. In this he is superior in judgment to Van Dyck, his contemporary, who, considering the hands of no particular importance in this respect, always used one model for them. There is a delightful harmony in the whole. It is charming to observe the rich but simple treatment; the breadth and certainty of his touch, its sharpness, promptness, and celerity; his free, bold, intelligent, supple handling, its dash and brilliancy, together with its moderation. There is a buoyancy, a joyousness — in fact, a jocoseness about him that places him most in sympathy with the painters of today. Here are much fiber and unction; good red blood, and plenty of it. How fine and living are his heads, and how expressive! Moreover, the action and movement are stirring. One can feel the moral atmosphere that pervades the group of the original Orangemen, pioneers in the cause of civic and religious freedom in the Netherlands.

The Jolly Man

To the period of this picture belongs "The Jolly Man" of the Ryks Museum at Amsterdam, one of those light subjects which Hals threw off in moments of relaxation; yet in point of technic it may be more remarkable than his more serious work in displaying the deftness and rapidity of his touch. In coloring it is golden and luminous. The dress is ocher, and the background is of a duller tone of the same. The hat is black, and the ruffs are white. The jolly fellow is in the act of singing; this explains the action. His face is all animation as he trolls his merry song. One outstretched hand is in the act of marking the time—a very characteristic action in a comic piece; while in the other he holds a wine-glass, grasping the lower rim.

"The Jester" is an uncertain work though certainly displaying remarkable cleverness of handling. i had engraved this example before the others. When I had nearly completed it, the director of the museum came round to look at my work, and told me that the painting was considered by competent judges to be a doubtful example of the master, painted probably by some one of the Hals family, for Hals had sons who were skilful painters. It was not until after I had spent some six weeks at Haarlem, engraving the corporation picture, and had again confronted "The Jester", that I felt competent to pass judgment upon it myself.

"The Jester"

I could then clearly see in it the evidences of a heavier hand, something foreign to Frans Hals. The touch is conscious, and displayed apparently for its own sake. In the hand striking the strings it is bungling. In his touch Frans Hals is simplicity itself, perfectly natural and unconscious. At times it is perfectly indifferent, as in "The Jolly Man"; and again, in his more finished works, the smoothest possible rendering in engraving would be necessary to give an adequate idea of its softness, and of the subtle blending of the tints.

It is only within the last quarter of a century that Frans Hals has received the recognition due to his brilliant talents. Unfortunately, the records of his life are very meager; but what we have of his history, from latest researches, shows him to us as a very different character from the mere sot his former biographers made him out to be. His habits were convivial, and he took no thought of the things of the morrow. His renown was great in his day; he was a member of the Guild of Rhetoric, of the Civic Guard, and of the Guild of St. Luke, and he received a pension from the town of Haarlem in his old age. The Hals family occupied a place of distinction among the patrician houses of Haarlem fully two centuries before the artist's birth; but owing to misfortunes consequent upon the war of independence, his parents removed to Antwerp, where, about the year 1580, Frans was born. While he was yet a boy, however, his family returned to their native town, where the artist was mainly educated, and where he spent the rest of his long and uneventful, career. He is supposed to have received some instruction in his art before he came to Haarlem, but it is known that at this latter place he entered the school of Karel van Mander in the beginning of the seventeenth century.

In genre painting, to which the taste of the times strongly set, Frans Hals led the way. He was one of the first who sought to break up the hitherto staid and serious forms, and to introduce homely reality and easy comedy. He is particularly happy in the delineation of mirth — a master, in fact, of the art of painting a laugh. The titles of many of his pictures, half-lengths of life-size and smaller, to be found in the galleries of Europe,— such as "The Jolly Topers", "The Jolly Trio", "A Jolly Toper Sitting at a Table", "Laughing Women", "Singing Boys", "The Frolicsome Man", "Table Company", etc.,— are sufficiently suggestive of the good humor that has earned for him the title of "jolly Frans Hals."

He was twice married, living happily for nearly fifty years with his second wife, by whom he was the father of a large family. In the Amsterdam Museum there is a portrait of him seated beside his wife upon a sylvan slope within the shade of overhanging foliage, which represents him to us quite as we should imagine him in his moments of relaxation, when he is lightly mocking us. His wife, resting her hand upon his shoulder, joins him in sympathetic look and gesture.

In the Haarlem Museum is a picture representing the school of Frans Hals. It shows the interior of a studio, in which a number of artists are drawing from a nude model, while the aged painter, who presides, is greeting a late comer at the door. From the inscription on the back we learn that it is the atelier of Hals as it appeared about the year 1652. He was then nearly seventy-two. His success as a master is seen in the powerful influence he exercised over the works of his contemporaries, and in the number of celebrated men who, directly or indirectly, sprang from his studio.

A story is told of a visit paid to Hals by Van Dyck. The latter was then twenty-two; Hals, nineteen years his senior. As a pleasantry Van Dyck suppressed his name, announcing himself as a wealthy stranger who wished to sit for his portrait, but who had only a couple of hours to spare. Hals fell to with his usual impetuosity, and completed a portrait for the sitter's inspection in even less than the limited time, much to the satisfaction of the latter, who expressed an astonishment not altogether feigned at the speed of its execution. "Surely," said he, "painting is an easier thing than I thought. Suppose we change places, and see what I can do." The exchange was made. Hals instantly detected that the person before him was no stranger to the brush. He speculated in vain as to who he might be. But when the second portrait was finished in still less time than the first, the mystery was solved. Rushing to his guest, he clasped him in a fraternal embrace. The man who can do that," he cried, " must be either Van Dyck or the devil!"

T. C.