RKD STUDIES

A1.91 – A1.100

... 92As with most of Hals’s sitters, personal elements are added to the official representation in this pair of portrait of a gentleman and h...

... o be based on an amicable interrupted conversation with her husband, to whom her upper body is turned. It should be noted that dendrochronological examination has confirmed a connectio...

... h his skeptically raised eyebrows and pursed lower lip. There may also be a hint of impatience. A portrait-historical peculiarity in this respect, is the portrait of Van der Horn that was painted in 1662 by Jan de Braij (c.1626/27- 1697)[1].3 It is identical in format to Hals' painting, which was executed 24 years earlier. In addition, it depicts the sitter in the same pose, same lateral rotation, and same lighting. The comparison of the two portraits allows a rare insight into the observational style of two different Haarlem portraitists, and likewise provides a clear image of the model’s distinctive features....

... cated amicable expression, Hals captured a settled personality, with a character that was probably more even-tempered and pleasant than her husband’s. She was the daughter of Pieter Jacobsz. Olycan (1572-1658) (A3.25, A3.32) and the sister of several of Hals’s sitters in single and group portraits....

... y depicted in the 1637 portrait in São Paulo (A1.83), Jan Soop the Younger is mentioned as a sitter for Hals in the 1661 inventory of Willem Schrijver (1608-1661), a nephew and heir of property from the Soop family. The reference reads: ‘a portrait of the old captain Soop by Frans Hals and another one of the young Jan Soop, also by Hals’.7 The two portraits are mentioned as located in the ante room of the first floor in Schrijvers House no. 210 on the Herengracht in Amsterdam. They were not conceived as pendants, but their size corresponds largely (today 88 x 66 cm and 86 x 69 cm), suggesting a matching frame and hanging.Stylistically, the present picture differs from the stronger movement that is visible in Jan Soop the Elder’s portrait of 1637 (A1.83). It is closer to the calm poses and softer modelled heads and hands in the Rotterdam Portrait of a man [2] and the Portrait of a man in the Swedish Royal Collections, dated 1638 (A1.89). Based on Dudok van Heel’s suggestion of a connection with the portrait commission by Jan Soop the Elder, a possible date of 1638 for the present painting would thus be plausible. In that case, both pictures would not have been painted in Amsterdam but in Haarlem, where the Soop family owned property and had close relatives....

... 3...

... depicted within a feigned oval frame. The position of the arms and the hands is broadly similar to Portrait of a woman in the National Gallery (A1.98), and...

... s at some time even reduced to 59.5 x 44 cm. The character study of a suspicious-looking middle-aged woman is confidently done, with seemingly loose brushwork in the plump hands as well as in the softly rounded fac...

... scribes the portraits of Nicolaes Noppen (1600/1605-1657) and his wife Geertruijt as life-size.10Noppen was a Haarlem brewer. Both him and his wife were Mennonites, which corresponds to the clothing and austere hairstyle in the two portraits in Cologne. A closely related representation with regard to both bearing and clothing can be found in the Portrait of Lucas de Clercq (A1.42) and the Portrait of Feyntje van Steenkiste (A1.72A), who also were Mennonites....

... and mouth, constitutes an important benchmark against which most female portraits of the 1640s fall short – which therefore supports their attribution to assistants in Hals’s workshop....

A1.81 – A1.90

... is finger, wearing a beret, c. 1636-1637...

... everal restorations and examinations since 1981. Before, the collar had been changed and the hand had become invisible through overpainting. A copy of the overpainted state was formerly in the Epstein collection in Baltimore and later with Newhouse Galleries in New York, which Valentiner thought to be probably a portrait of one of Frans Hals’s sons (A1.81a).2 From today’s perspective, it is certainly possible that one of Hals’s sons sat for such a genre painting, yet any other easily available model would have done just as well....

... the composition of Boy pointing with his finger, wearing a beret in the over...

... a bachelor and apparently vain, as his expensive outfit suggests. In his estate there were 47 paintings, including a work by Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and one by Hendrick Goltzius (1558-1617). His estate inventory lists nine portraits without naming the painters.3 This disregard is typical for the contemporary approach to this genre, probably including Frans Hals’s role as portrait painter - and not just by this patron....

... to painter, are demonstrated so clearly. Since this is an irreversible mental process, which lays out a subconscious foundation for the creative process, it would not be an arbitrary choice of expression. I therefore maintain the later date of 1637 for the present picture.Grijzenhout and Dudok van Heel presented a series of arguments in favor of the identification of the present portrait’s sitter as the Amsterdam citizen Jan Hendricksz. Soop (1578-1638).5 Originally, he had been a glass blower, and after the closure of his glass manufacture in 1622, Het Glashuis in Amsterdam, he commanded a company of Waardgelders in The Hague. These were mercenaries who would protect the city against riots or attacks, if the civic guard were no longer in a position to manage the situation. Based on the date of completion of the painting of 1637, Soop would have been 59 years old in his portrait, which matches the present painted representation indeed. Shortly before his death, or even in anticipation of nearing the end of his life, he could have donned the outfit of his former authority accordingly and have his portrait painted in a commanding pose. The impression given by the present pictures would be in keeping with that....

... ress so much graciousness. In comparison with the earlier representative portraits of men of rank, the movement is reduced and just subtle here. The painterly execution displays a reduced coloring and striking smoothness....

... ly observed, and at the same time appealing, abstract manner [3]. The modelling of hand and glove is equally simple and confident as in the male pendant. Overall, Hals’s sober physiognomic capture is nevertheless more suited to the disposition of the gentleman than to that of the lady, who is not much flattered....

... is portrait away from the 1635 Portrait of a woman in the Frick Collection (A1.78) that Valentiner suggested as a possible companion piece.6 What seemed conceivable in the grey reproductions from earlier periods cannot be upheld on the basis of today’s color reproductions. An attempt to identify the sitter as the Friesland lawyer Johannes Saeckma (1572-1636) is now disproved as well.7...

... yebrows.Together with the Portrait of Theodorus Schrevelius (A4.1.1A), this modello for an engraving – executed as a miniature portrait in the same size and entirely by the master’s own hand – stands out in the overall production of Frans Hals and his workshop. Did the calligrapher perhaps recognize a special quality in Hals’s confident brushstroke? For Hals, a portrait was painted according to the commission, by himself or by others. In this instance, the objective was probably both the painted and the engraved image, meant to reflect favorably the abilities of the penman....

... the forehead is higher, the chin wider, while the eyebrows are more pointy. Also, the present portrait displays a rounder head. In addition, size and technique do not correspond to what is listed by Hofstede de Groot. Under nos. 240 and 241, he records a pair of pictures sold at auction in Amsterdam in 1850 and 1851, depicting Jan de Wael (1594-1663) and his wife Aeltgen Dircksdr. Pater, both measuring 73 x 54 cm, painted on panel.12De Winkel associated the hitherto unidentified Portrait of a man (A1.101) as the companion piece of the present portrait. However, when Verspronck’s 1653 Portrait of Johan de Wael appeared – most recently with Agnew’s in London – it became clear that the men’s likenesses do not ...

... t apologetic and somewhat wistful. The corners of his mouth are slightly extended and his eyebrows raised. The coloring is muted and entirely focused on the face. In a subtle lighting, the much emphasized plasticity of previous years has be...

... al Collection, inv.no. 376Pendant to A1.89As is so often the case with Hals’s female portr...

A1.35 - A1.44

... ngs and is known through a 1661 Amsterdam inventory.4A large number of copies and variants of the Schwerin pair have been created throughout the centuries, differing in size and format. As Slive put it, ‘most of them are poor caricatures of the original’.5 The Laughing boy with a flute was copied and repeated even more frequently than its pendant.6In both paintings, the diagonal grain of the panel is visible through the semi-opaque paint layers of the shaded and background areas. Hals and his workshop repeatedly used the support in this way for their genre paintings.7 Semi-opaque paint layers can be observed clearly in the shaded passages in the faces, next to the opaquely colored areas in the highlighted parts. At the transition between light and shade, for example along the nose and cheeks, Hals has added sweeping strokes with a dry brush....

... ist, c. 1627...

... nchanged.It is not fully known how the two paintings of St Luke and St Matthew ended up in Odessa. In 1812, the Hermitage selected 30 paintings for the decoration of churches on Crimea, including the set of four evangelists by Hals. According to the exhibition catalogue The Return of St Luke. West-European paintings of the 16th -18th centuries from Ukrainian museums, Hals’s evangelist pictures had hung in a church in Odessa until they were lost during the turmoil of the October revolution and the civil war.11 Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, a curator from the Museum of Western and Oriental Art in Odessa is said to have discovered the pictures of St Luke and St Matthew at a flea market and purchased them cheaply for the museum. The paintings had been in storage there until Irina Linnik identified them as works by Hals in 1959.12 In 1964, the painting of St Luke was lent to an exhibition in Moscow, from where it was stolen. The police recovered it the same year from a gang of burglars, together with other artworks. A 1971 Russian crime film, The Return of St Luke, describes the story of the theft....

... ist, c. 1627...

... th figure of an old man with a small child who reaches into his book.14It is not known who commissioned the series of the four evangelists from Hals. They may have been intended for a private chapel or a hidden catholic church. In this context, Slive referred to the estate inventory of Willem van Heythuysen (1585-1650), in whose house a series of pictures with the four evangelists is recorded as hanging in the hall, albeit in grisaille.15...

... ist, c. 1627...

... ical location. Even with a secular approach, the sitters’ bearing and gestures had to be in keeping with tradition. There is no direct model for the type of head and the hand position of St Mark, but Hals may have followed similar types from the artworks of others. For example, there is the disciple on the left of Abraham Bloemaert's (1566-1651) Supper at Emmaus, dated 1622 [2]. Bloemaert painted his highly sculptural and colorful scene for the Catholic church of Sint Bernardus in Haarlem.17 The gestures of the disciple seated to the left of Christ can be found in reverse and turned towards the viewer in Hals’s St Mark the Evangelist. An even closer relationship to the present picture is suggested by the bust of an old man, which is almost identical in size, but undated, and attributed to Hendrick Bloemaert (c. 1601-1672) [3]....

... ist, c. 1627...

... re recovered, their original coloring and brushwork has become mostly visible again through cleaning and restoration. In comparison to the two other evangelists, St. Luke and St Matthew, they stand out against the latter’s substantial overpainting, particularly in the faces and hands. A sensitive and skillful restoration of these coarse interventions could result in making the series more visually balanced again....

... stic elements, they should be dated earlier than the wedding in 1630. The sitter is probably also older than the captain on the guardsmen’s picture; he is taller and more bulky than that rather short and dainty gentleman, if we take his later portrait in the painting by Pieter Soutman (1593/1601-1657) of 1642 into account [4].22 In Hals’s, as well as in Soutman’s guardsmen’s portrait, his face is less fleshy, more angular and more creased. The shape of the eyebrows differs, as does the shape of the eyes in their sockets, the cheekbones and chin – which is v-shaped there and rounder here. In both paintings Backer’s eyes are dark brown; the present sitter appears to have a lighter, green-grey eye color. In addition, the hair, moustache and beard could not be changed at random at the time; it is not likely that a man with such thinning temples as in the Frick portrait, could return to a full head of hair a few years later, as is seen in Soutman’s depiction. The fact that Backer owned a portrait of himself and his wife is not unusual and still quite far from the possibility that Hals was the painter....

... ortunately, no date has been preserved in the painting itself, or in related documentation. While the measurements, representation and background color of the female portrait match with those of the male counterpart, there are differences in style and quality of execution. The generous and effective style, and the vibrant appearance of the present are not visible in the female likeness, which today appears flatter and less expressive due to overpainting, and which for some reason was painted as late as 1635.24...

... ancestral portrait, painted for family commemoration or other forms of representation. Yet, there is neither a clear didactical purpose, for example expressing a warning against misbehavior such as in Verdonck (A1.34), or displaying laughter and other distinct emotions as examples of the transience of sensory impressions. Historically, the only reason for this painting would have been a commission. Unless it was entirely private in character, the only explanation is Slive's suggestion of a commission for a gallery of courtesans, i.e. a representation on the door of a room in a brothel.29 If this was the case, Hals may not only have painted a single portrait. The interpretation is further supported by the fact that the area of the girl’s chest was originally more covered by her blouse, which can be discerned in slanting light. This indicates an interest in making her appear more like a prostitute at a later stage....

... ait.32The sketchy manner of execution relates this picture to genre paintings like Two laughing boys (A1.33), Verdonck (A1.34) and Laughing boy with a wine glass (A1.35). These informal elements would be an argument in favor of the picture not being a commission but rather a portrait within the family or a circle of friends....

C11 - C20

... elect fruitful labour!’1A disconcerting detail of the portrait in this engraving is the improbable light reflex in the right eye, which is not present in the painted variant. It is remarkable that Pieter de Molijn (1616-1661) is recorded as the publisher of the print. Not only does Molijn appear in documents as an expert working with Hals in picture valuations, he was also involved in the execution of the backgrounds for several works by Hals (for instance: A2.7, A3.30)....

... is another state of the print, featuring a poem in Latin....

... he intact state of the hands and neck of the boy in front. At an unknown date, a wrongly foreshortened hand of the left boy was inserted into the original painting in Kassel and the partly raised hand of the lute player was overpainted in part....

... in Edinburgh [4], featuring the following verse below:‘This is Verdonck, the brazen fellow, Whose jawbone assails one and...

... ter the print by Jan van de Velde (1593-1641), published by Johannes de Ram (1648-1693), who was activ...

... er’s motto. We know that Arnold Möller (1581-1655) was a writing master in Lübeck, where he had gained citizenship in 1606. He prepared copper plates for his writing templates and created elaborate etchings on large metal plates. The division of labour in the assignment of the present commission is remarkable: from a citizen of Lübeck to the Haarlem painter Frans Hals and then to the Augsburg engraver Lucas Kilian (1579-1637). The medium for the modello must have been fairly fast-drying and easily portable. It was most likely a portrait on paper....

... iscuit, after 1629...

... mily that ran a successful printing business, and he was active as an art dealer as well. As the signature indicates, the present print was most likely printed by his family’s printing business. The dimensions of the print match the octavo book format, so it is possible for the print to have been intended to be sold both as a loose print and as part of a publication....

... er a lost modello by Frans Hals, dated 1630. Nothing is known about the sitter....

... uch as the violin players in Richmond, Vienna and private property (A4.2.8a, A4.2.8b, A2.2.9). Hofrichter references a note by Slive about a painted variant of the composition, which is presently in a private English collection (A4.2.51).5...

... 269 x 215 mmAmsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv.no. RP-P-OB-60.667Based on Hals’s painting in Kassel [6]. The ins...

... issimosque viros, patres melancholicorum conscriptos pugna porcorvm, 1648...

... l editions in 1642, 1648, 1663, 1689 and 1720.7 Only the 1663 and 1648 editions include this illustration....

... is merry Andrew, c. 1670...

... hen I In parting with their Gold and Silver Coin To Cure your Poor Consumptive Purse and mine My Antick fool in my fantastick Dress With Grinning Looks thy wonted words Express And let thy Humours all be Acted well That so I may my worthy Packets Sell For tho I in a Velvet Coat Appear I am not worth one single Groat a Year’.This engraving is relevant for the history of the reception of Hals’s work; it proves that around 1670 two works by his hand had already come to England and caught attention there. It also confirms that it was the subject matter which attracted attention, not the name of the painter....

C41 - C50

... Noord-Hollands Archief (C42). It was tentatively attributed to Cornelis van den Berg (1699-1774) by Karel G. Boon.1...

... ...

... the series Airs de different autheurs à deux [et trois] parties, published between 1658 and 1694 by the same house.2 Likely, the design for the decorative border thus originate from 16th-century France. It still remains unclear who decided to employ it for surrounding the portrait of Frans Hals and when this happened exactly. Since it was common for publishing houses to sell off the woodblocks and copper plates that were no longer in use, any individual interested in printing could have acquired it....

... upil and later on the assistant of Adriaen van Ostade (1610-1685). When reversed, the print shows striking consistency with the sitter’s physiognomy in Van Ostade’s painted portrait by Hals [1]....

... is a proof for the abovementioned mezzotint, in which the area outside the oval has been rendered in grey ink. The banner and p...

... .no. RP-P-1883-A-6808This print’s composition is identical to that in two extant paintings [...

... reated in 1645, possibly as a commission from the sitter (A1.116). In the present state, Hoornbeeck is described as being a professor in Utrecht. A later state of the same print, mentions him as profe...

... 26The original plate by Jonas Suyderhoef (1614-1686) was cut down in size and reworked by an anonymous hand, adding the re...

... sitter’s death in February 1650, as can be inferred from the inscription. The Latin verses below the portrait read as follows:‘Here is the likeness of the Child of Nature: the one son Who opened a way for the mind to the womb of that Mother. While assigning all mir...

... er-Ysselsche Sangen en Dichten. Through his poems written in Dutch he reached a broad audience, with some hymns well-known until the present day.The portrait with its determined and searching gaze is only preserved in the engraving. While the psychology of the facial features was convincingly captured, the area of the too small hand seems an afterthought. Its modelling suggests a modello which could have looked similar to those for the Wickenburg (A4.1.17, C49) and Post portraits (A4.1.18, C50).6 This means that the area of the face and shoulders was probably executed by Hals himself, while the hand was either not indicated by him or merely suggested and finished in detail by an assistant, most likely Frans Hals II (1618-1669)....

... 1686) engraving presents the mighty head of the sitter with its energetic expression down to the last detail of the hands and folds of the coat. Even though these were transferred into the grey shades of the engraving, the accurate placement of every single brushstroke in the model is obvious. Consequently, there must have been a fully developed portrait design. The priority of this engraving that documents Hals’s pictorial achievement is indisputable in comparison with the much coarser painted version that was last reported at a 1989 auction [7]....

... sts a plausible date for the execution of the present engraving. The connection with the only surviving painted portrait of this sitter – oil on paper, mounted onto canvas – would make for an exciting comparison [8]; sadly this modello has not been seen since its last exhibition in 1932.10...

... Museum, in reverse [9]. It probably served as the example for the drawing by Cornelis van den Berg (1699-1774) [10]....

2.9 Epilogue: Hals’s particular art

... anical copy. Rather, meanings were revealed which are no longer relevant for us today, as can be demonstrated in the shapes of former clothing and historical buildings. Artistic representation aimed at this visually imaginable spiritual sphere and selected motifs, aspects, and qualities which transcended everyday life symbolically, pointing above and beyond it. As Samuel van Hoogstraten (1627-1678) put it: ‘The art of painting is a science, which can represent all the ideas, or concepts that are provided by visible nature’.164...

1.22 Frans I and Frans II

... nts which fascinate in the briefest moment of experience. This difference can be perceived distinctly across the picture production of the Hals workshop. Examples are the execution of hands, and just as clearly, the treatment of the strings and tassels on collars [345] [346] [347]. Yet nothing proves as challenging as determining the facial expression. The fleeting appearance of the Kassel face is modelled by means of tones of varying brightness, subdued with grey [348]. The Paris face, then again, indeed displays brushwork that seeks to imitate Hals’s style, yet still remains focused on the objective contours of the nose, mouth, lower lip, eyelids and chin. Only in the shade below the chin, the artist has painted with bolder movements, even though the hard black line in that passage appears arbitrary [349]. ...

... rokes. This treatment differs from Hals’s confident modelling of shapes and his rhythmical structuring throughout. These weaknesses become especially apparent in the black clothing of the man seated on the far left. There, an arbitrary zigzag of brushstrokes was used to model the highlighted and shaded edges of the folds in the black costume, an approach that was largely copied in the Hendriks drawing [354] [355]. In addition, the regent’s upper arm comes out flat and much too small in comparison with the foreshortened lower arm. This hesitant and jittery brushwork continues in the hand closest to the observer, which provides another demonstration of the difference between master and assistant, as it is positioned just below the other hand that was probably executed previously – by Hals himself. The form of the latter, marked by a few lines, shows Hals’s concentrated approach, which is also tied in with the rhythm of the diagonal parallel lines. In contrast, the anatomically awkward search for the correct shape and the application of multiple layers of paint in the other hand betray the assistant’s lack of orientation [356]. ...

... e painting [361]. In all these cases it seems as if accents that appeared too harsh have been concealed at later stage in the creation process. This hypothesis is supported by the sudden disappearance of the craquelure in these areas, as if being covered by a cloud. The painting must have been completely dry at the moment of such an intervention. It is conceivable that the corrections were carried out by the assistant who was involved in the execution of large areas such as the face of the man second from the left [357], and the costume of the seated man on the outer left [354]. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that these adjustments are fairly early corrections by a third hand, still carried out at the request of the patrons.To differentiate between these possibilities, we need to take an unadulterated autograph painting by Frans Hals from his later career as a point of reference. Strictly speaking, there is only one artwork which is suitable for this, as it is particularly well preserved and close to the group-portraits of the regents and regentesses in terms of execution: the small Portrait of a man in the Mauritshuis in The Hague [362]. The sometimes jittery, almost dribbling manner used for depicting the cast shadows and highlights in this portrait – clearly visible in the nose, mouth and chin – differs from the swift brushstrokes observed in other late works [363]. This suggests a later date of creation than that of the Portrait of Willem Croes in Munich (A1.128) and the Portrait of a man with a slouch hat from Kassel (A1.130). The handling matches with the application of the accents in the face of the seated regent in the far right in Regents of the Old Men’s Almshouse in Haarlem (A3.62) [360], and also with the rendering of the faces of the second and third woman from the left in its counterpart, the Regentesses of the Old Men’s Almshouse in Haarlem (A3.63) [364] [365]. The painterly style in these three works is characterized by the use of tentative short and thin strokes that mark highlights and shadow edges. These are the result of working with a mahlstick to support a shaky hand. With the wrist support, the brush can only glide over short distances, a limitation that is especially obvious in the faces of the regentesses, whose portraits were Hals’s last major commission. ...

... olors and lighting in Hals’s painting were chosen to be darker than in that of Verspronck, Wybrand Hendriks’s watercolor copy after the Regents of the Old Men’s Almshouse in Haarlem (D32) demonstrates that the background must be understood as a light colored – whitish grey or light ochre – internal wall. The sitters in their dark clothing stood out against it as distinctive silhouettes in both group-portraits of the Old Men’s Almshouse’s officials. What this may have looked like, can be seen in a suggested reconstruction of the original tonality and brightness of the Regentesses of the Old Men’s Almshouse in Haarlem [372].The differences in execution between the portraits of the Old Men’s Almshouse’s male and female governors suggest the paintings were commissioned in sequence. Since Hals’s autograph share in the female counterpart can only be observed in traces, and it is clearly discernible in the male group-portrait, it seems likely that the latter was created earlier. The achievements of the assistant, most likely Frans the Younger, can neither be traced any further than to these two final commissions. Judging from the contributions we can assign to him, this companion of the great master had also reached the end of his abilities. Frans the Younger’s death in April 1669 did not spell the end of an independent creative individual, as can be also observed in the two family-portraits in London (A4.3.19) and Madrid (A4.3.24). ...

1.9 Willem Buytewech in Hals‘s workshop

... in around 1873, before being sold to a collector in the Unites States. Nowadays, a clear impression of the composition is only provided by the two paintings of the same size that were formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum in Berlin [97] and in a Sotheby’s sale of 1979 [98]....

... y particular approach full of detail. Her narrow, long body and extended arms, as well as the execution of her face and hands are close to Buytewech’s style of representation, even though his female figures are generally depicted on a smaller scale [101] [102]. Accordingly, the Berlin painting was suspected of being an early work by Buytewech, and Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann (1923-2017) included it in his catalogue raisonné of Buytewech’s paintings as no. 1.23 The attribution is plausible if we compare Buytewech’s typification of faces – as in the shape and slant of the eyes – with that of Hals [103] [104][105].24 ...

... ca matching the details of his description. Slive’s assessment also hints at this: ‘it may be closer to the original than the Berlin copy’.26Judging from today’s comparative possibilities, the Sotheby’s version is indeed a copy, painted more smoothly than the Berlin one. Both the angular brushstroke of Hals, and the style of folds by Buytewech appear more distinctly in the Berlin picture, which therefore seems to have been the model – and probably the first execution – for the Sotheby’s version that is simplified in some details, and not vice versa. In the Sotheby’s picture, simplifications were made in the collar and folds and the row of buttons in the man’s black coat [106] [107]. In addition, these changes also weaken the compositional elements that create an appearance of character, with a semblance of movement....