FRANS HALS
The readiest way to study the art of Holland in the seventeenth century
is under the separate heads of portraiture, landscape, marine, genre,
and still-life. In this way one obtains a comprehensive survey of the
development of each of these branches, and is not confused by the fact
that many of the artists practised in more than one of them. But at the
start it must be observed that these separate departments are inclosed
in a common motive. As Fromentin says, the art of Holland was
essentially an art of portraiture. It followed from the character of the
people and the conditions under which they found themselves. They were a
nation of burghers, practical in mind, direct in action, self-centered,
and full of personal and local pride. What more likely, in fact more
inevitable, than that they should need and their painters should supply
an art which gave a complete, exact, and for the most part unembellished
portrait of the country, its people, and their habits of life.
But while this common motive of portraiture, which distinguishes every
branch of Holland painting, was in response to a common and collective
need of the people, it was modified and shaped by the example of two
leading personalities: Hals and Rembrandt. So determining was their
influence that an analysis of their respective motives and methods is
not only a necessary preliminary but the quickest way to a comprehension
of the development of the whole school.
They had characteristics in common. One might almost represent the two
men by concentric circles; Hals being the inner, Rembrandt the
indefinitely larger one. Hals was an epitome of the genius of the Dutch
race; Rembrandt was also this, but more--the expression of a genius
peculiarly his own. Both manifested, Hals invariably, Rembrandt at
times, the quality of direct seeing and doing that was a national
characteristic; but at other times Rembrandt was possessed of a
spirituality, if one may so call it, that was directly opposed to the
prevailing practicalness. Let us study each for the purpose of
discovering what was his own personal art and how it affected the art of
others.
Hals, then, the leader of the Haarlem School, we will examine first, not
only because he was the oldest of the famous men of the seventeenth
century, but also because his own genius was so closely representative
of that of his countrymen. Of his life there is little to record. He was
born in Antwerp, in 1584, but of parents of good Haarlem stock,
temporarily driven from home by the vicissitudes of the war. He may have
begun his studies in Antwerp, but by 1608 was probably settled in
Haarlem. It must have been about two years later that he married a lady
named Anneke Hermanszoon, for their child, Harmen Hals, was baptized on
the 2d of September, 1611. The marriage appears to have been
unfortunate, a record, dated 1616, showing that the husband was
summoned and reprimanded by the magistrates for drunkenness and violent
conduct toward his wife. She died a few days later, apparently from
natural causes, and the following year Hals married Lysbeth Reyniers,
with whom he lived for fifty years, bringing up a large family. That his
conduct toward the first wife was not very seriously viewed by the
community seems to be proved by the fact that in 1617 and 1618 he and
his brother Dirck were elected members of the School of Rhetoric. Later
they were elected to the Civic Guard and to the Painters’ Guild of St.
Luke in Haarlem.
Like almost all the artists of his time, he was involved in pecuniary
difficulties. In 1652 a baker sued him for the amount of two hundred
guilders, a debt incurred for bread supplied and for small loans
occasionally advanced. He obtained possession of the artist’s movables,
but allowed him to continue in the use of them. Ten years later we find
Hals, now seventy-eight years old, applying for relief from the city
government, which granted him one hundred and fifty dollars in quarterly
instalments. This exhausted, he renewed his application for public
assistance, and was granted a yearly pension of two hundred guilders.
Two years later, on or about the 26th of August, 1666, he died in his
eighty-second year and was buried beneath the choir of the Church of St.
Bavon in Haarlem.
These few circumstances represent practically all that is known of Frans
Hals’s life as a man. The main suggestion to be derived from them is
that he was held in considerable esteem by his fellow-townsmen. The
painters enrolled him in their guild; his creditor did not unduly press
him, and the municipality attended to the needs of his declining years.
It is fit to dwell on these points, because a tradition, apparently
started by Houbraken, the painter-historian of the artists of the
period, has clung about the memory of Hals, representing him to have
been a frequenter of pot-houses and generally dissolute. But, except for
the reprimand administered to him in the affair of his first wife, there
is nothing on record to prove the accuracy of this tradition. One is
therefore permitted to believe that the incident was a single offense;
sufficiently reprehensible, but not to be counted against his whole
life. On the other hand, the leniency of the baker and the relief voted
by the municipality may be fairly taken as arguments against the story
of his worthlessness. But the most reliable evidence of its falsity is
to be found in his work as an artist. It is inconceivable that the
portraits and character studies which he executed in such numbers could
have been produced by a man whose brain was fuddled with dissipation.
The very character of his technique gives the lie to such a suspicion;
for, as we shall see presently, it was the product of a particularly
vigorous comprehension of facts, and was rendered in a method
extraordinarily direct and sure, and often under circumstances of great
rapidity. While his work is uneven in quality, it is only toward the end
that there is a falling off in the certainty and the completeness of his
technique. But the pathos that attaches to the two memorable examples of
this decline, which now hang in the Haarlem Museum, the groups of male
and female _Regents of the Hospital for the Poor_, is due to their
revelation, not of any premature loss of power, but of the sapping of
vitality which comes after fourscore years.
On the other hand, it would be fatal to a just appreciation of Hals to
try to shape him to our modern notions of propriety. His character was
certainly not staid; it may well have been, by present-day comparisons,
unregulated. He was a man of his own time, and the character of his
fellow-citizens may be seen in the groups he has left behind of the
officers of the Civic Guard. They were men of vigorous personality, of
strong passions; they lived high and, maybe, at times a bit recklessly.
They had faced death in battle, and enjoyed the leisure which their own
exertions had helped to bring about. That they enrolled Hals in their
organization suggests that he was a man after their own heart. He must
have been; otherwise he never could have painted them as he did,
realizing at once their individualities of character and the general
character of enthusiastic good-fellowship that united them. In none of
these portraits is there any hint of excess, but in all the declaration
of conviviality. It is quite reasonable to assume that this represents a
truer portrait of the artist’s own personal character than the one
suggested by Houbraken.
Moreover, there is another phase of his character that is positively
revealed in his work. It is that of humor. Whether he is painting one of
the curious and sometimes discreditable characters that haunted the
streets and resorts of Haarlem, or the portrait of some burgomaster,
fully alive to his own importance, or recording the puissance and the
pageantry of the military guilds, it is always in a genial mood, not
seldom with manifest humor. In fact, if ever there was an artist to
whom, as revealed in his work, the epithet “jolly” were appropriate, it
is Frans Hals.
And here we may note a shrewd observation by the German critic W. Bode.
“The artist’s particular gift,” he says, “which we find in nearly every
one of his portraits, consists in his establishing a lively connection
between the person or persons represented and a supposed third person.”
He does not represent the individual or group as if posing for himself,
but as if he had surprised them in the presence of a third person, or as
if he had in mind the impression that would be produced in a third
person’s mind by the scene in front of him. His own point of view, in
fact, is more than objective, more than a recognition of direct, visible
facts; it is rather expansive, drawing into the circumference of its own
observation the points of view and feeling of others than himself. One
may almost say that he has the gift of revealing his personages not only
as they appeared to him, but also as they were regarded by their
contemporaries. Whether singly or in groups, they seem to be perfectly
at home in an atmosphere at once sympathetic and conducive to the most
spontaneous expression of their own natures. Thus, as Bode adds, “he has
a great gift of rendering any passing moment of psychical agitation.”
Before proceeding to an analysis of his technique, we may note two other
general characteristics: the vigor and the imagination that it involves.
An artist’s technique is a measure of his personality, even though his
[Illustration: THE JOLLY TOPER FRANS HALS
RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM]
motive be as impersonal as Hals’s. The latter’s point of view was
objective, intent on seeing and rendering the facts of things as they
confronted him; but, unlike many objective painters whose technique
presents merely a correct and efficient record, because their own mind
is little more than a mirror, reflecting mechanically what is in front
of it, Hals’s mind was an active vitalizer of the impressions that it
received. The distinction corresponds pretty completely to the
difference which may exist between two lecturers. One will give a
careful presentation of his subject which we listen to with interest,
and, if we have confidence in his ability, with a willingness to accept
his conclusions; but another will do more. Because of the gusto with
which he attacks his subject, the genial, expansive outlook with which
he views it, the broadly human spirit in which he treats it, even
because of the tone of voice and gesture of body with which he lends
color and warmth to his remarks, he will so stimulate his audience that
they cease to be mere listeners. Their own brains are at work; they
become active participators in the train of thought. It is in this kind
of way that Hals’s technique affects one. It is the product of so ample
and genial an outlook, so teems with gusto, and manifests itself with
such an assurance of conviction and so vigorously facile a style, that
it stimulates the imagination. In the presence of his portraits one is
no passive spectator, but aroused to an activity of appreciation.
I have spoken of imagination; and I mean to imply a twofold exercise
thereof: that Hals himself exhibited imagination and kindles it also in
the spectator. To some people it may seem to be an abuse of the word to
speak of imagination, in the case of an artist so content to be occupied
with the objective traits of his subject as Hals was. But they overlook
the fact that, while an artist may exercise no imagination in the choice
of a subject, he may display a great deal in the rendering of it. He may
not give reins to his imagination as Rembrandt did, peering below the
surface of things, exploring the hidden recesses of the human soul; he
may, on the contrary, be satisfied to be an able craftsman, handling the
material presented to him, intent only on giving to it form and
character; yet, even so, he will exhibit what one may call a technical
imagination. And it is precisely this which characterizes the technique
of Hals. It appears in the arrangement of his compositions, especially
in the group-portraits, where it takes the form of a superior kind of
inventiveness, which is but a phase of imagination. This gift abounds in
the corporation pictures at Haarlem. The problem of disposing so many
figures in such a way that each shall have its due share of individual
emphasis, and yet that the whole group may have, on the one hand, a
naturalness and spontaneity of suggestion, and, on the other, a
reasonable amount of artistic unity, was one to try to its utmost
capacity an artist’s inventiveness. Hals was the first to solve it; and,
while other artists profited by his example, none could attain to the
completeness of his success. You may be thinking of Rembrandt’s _Syndics
of the Cloth Guild_; but the latter’s composition contains only six
figures, whereas in Hals’s masterpiece, _The Reunion of the Officers of
the Archers of St. Andrew_, there are fourteen. For a just comparison
you should rather choose Van der Helst’s great composition in the Rijks
Museum, _The Banquet of the Civic Guard_, an amazing example of
inventiveness, but lacking in the suppleness, spontaneity, and gusto
that Hals exhibits.
But the latter’s imagination is not alone displayed in the management of
intricate compositions. It is displayed also in the treatment of each
figure and in his pictures of single individuals; manifesting itself in
two ways, both in the way he has seen his subject and in the way he has
rendered it. And first for the imaginative quality of his vision. It is
concerned with externals, or at least with traits of character that lie
close to the surface; but with what an alertness it has observed the
idiosyncrasy of each person, and how completely it has comprehended it!
This is more than objective clear-sightedness; it implies a capacity to
reconstruct the retinal impression, and to clothe it with actual living
consciousness, that involves a marked exercise of the creative faculty
of imagination. If you still doubt it, again compare Hals with Van der
Helst, next to himself the most accomplished of the painters of
corporation pictures, and the verdict concerning the latter’s work will
surely be that by comparison it is prosy. At least that is the word that
seems to me to express the difference, and it conveys the suggestion
that the work is merely objective, unvitalized by the imaginative
faculty.
Further, observe how Hals treats the costumes and the accompaniments of
still-life in his pictures. He has not merely seen them; he has felt
them, realized in his imagination their distinctive character and their
relation to the whole impression. For those were brave days in Holland,
succeeding the expiration of the truce; an underlying bravery of spirit
and an external bravery of demeanor and manners characterized the life
of the burghers. It was not for nothing that their trade had absorbed
the finest weavers and artificers in the world; they decked themselves
and their families in the costliest fabrics of their looms and loaded
their tables with objects of fine plate. These things were more to them
than vanities; they were the expression of the proud preëminence they
had won. Now it is the spirit and the meaning of all this that Hals was
so skilful in rendering. Van der Helst’s displays of costume rather
suggest that “fine feathers make fine birds,” while the suggestion of
Hals is of fine fellows appropriately bedecked with finery. His
imagination, in fact, had caught the enthusiasm of the time and
discovered its interpretation. And, further still, apart from the
relation which this beauty of display bore to the temper of the times,
it needs imagination in an artist to interpret the beauty of a fabric or
an object of still-life. Mere imitation of its appearance is not
sufficient. Such merely represents the appearance; it does not interpret
it. The distinction will be clear to any one who is a student of
photography and has seen the still-life studies of flowers and fruit and
glassware by Baron A. de Meyer. In them the crude notion of merely
representing appearances has been superseded by the desire to make the
picture express the enthusiasm which their beauty has inspired. The
result is an interpretation of the sentiment of beauty. Such, too, is
Hals’s rendering of the silks and velvets and lawn ruffs, the dishes
and
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF NICOLAES VAN DER MEER FRANS HALS
BURGOMASTER OF HAARLEM
HAARLEM MUSEUM]
goblets, the fruit and wine, banners and weapons. He has not only seen
these things, he has felt their beauty; discovered, in fact, by an act
of imagination, the sentiment of beauty they involve.
And here I may add, in the way of anticipation, that, if a person is
dull to the sentiment of beauty that things inanimate may suggest, he is
not going to proceed very far toward an appreciation of the art of
Holland in the seventeenth century, for it was largely concerned with
the beauty that is inherent in material things. If he is conscious of
nothing more in the rendering of costumes and accessories with which
these pictures abound than the cleverness of material representation, he
will soon tire of the study, for the skilfulness is so frequently
repeated, and its very repetition will fatigue. He may begin by
exclaiming: “How wonderfully that sash, this velvet gown, or what not is
painted!” but, unless he can go on and share the enthusiasm for beauty
that inspired and assured the artist’s skill; if, in a word, his own
imagination cannot conspire with the imagination of the artist, he will
very shortly be an exceedingly tired student of Holland art.
So far we have discussed the imagination with which Hals observed his
subjects; it remains to note how imagination was involved in the
rendering of them. Really the two processes, the mental and the manual,
are inextricably united, for it was the way he felt his subject that
determined the impression he received of it, and the impression itself
that suggested the mode of rendering it. Yes, he was an Impressionist.
The term, as we know, is modern, dating from about 1871, but the idea
involved in it has been derived from the example of Frans Hals and of
his great contemporary Velasquez, with whom, however, so far as is
known, he had no possible chance of conferring. These two original
minds, separated by distance and the difference of race and by the
barrier of hostilities that precluded any acquaintance with each other
or each other’s work, were nevertheless kindred geniuses who
simultaneously discovered a new way of seeing and rendering their
subject. It did not survive their generation, for the artists of the
next century turned again to Italy, and Hals and Velasquez were
practically forgotten, until in the early sixties of the nineteenth
century Edouard Manet rediscovered Velasquez, and the study of him led
to the recognition of Hals, so that both became an example and
inspiration to modern art. It produced, in fact, a revolution in the
artist’s point of view and method of painting, and the principle
involved was dubbed Impressionism.
Some confusion still exists as to what is implied by this term. Many,
for example, having heard that Claude Monet is an Impressionist and
observing that he covers his pictures with little dabs of paint, suppose
that in this consists Impressionism. Others of wider observation, having
found themselves puzzled and even outraged by the vagaries in paint that
are committed under cover of Impressionism, have concluded that
Impressionism is something which, in the words of the late Lord
Dundreary, “No fellah can understand”; no layman, at least; and,
according to their temperament, they either foam at the mouth with
disgust of Impressionism or regard it as a comparatively harmless form
of lunacy. In either case they miss the fact that Impressionism has
become a vital principle of modern thought, expressing itself not only
in the arts: in painting, sculpture, literature, play-writing, acting,
music, and dancing, but also in modern methods of education, and, by a
natural extension of the idea involved, even in the modern attitude
toward matters of criminology and sanitation. These, however, are modern
evolutions from the single, simple principle involved in the
Impressionism of Hals and Velasquez. Before discussing this, let us note
what is surely interesting and extremely suggestive, namely, that both
the rudimentary principle, as it appears in Hals, and the efflorescence
to which it attained in the nineteenth century were contemporary with a
signal advance in the growth of the scientific spirit. It is, in fact,
of the latter that Impressionism is a phase.
With Hals, as with modern Impressionists, it represents a more natural
way of seeing. When the eye is directed toward an object, it sees the
latter as a whole; it perceives some details and fails to perceive
others; it automatically selects and eliminates. There is another way of
seeing, as when the object is kept for a long time under observation,
and the eye travels over it at leisure and exhaustively examines every
part. Of a picture that records the results of this way of seeing, we
exclaim, “How realistic!” And so in a sense it is; but, on the other
hand, we know that it does not really represent the way in which we see
things in every-day life. What our eye usually records is not an
inventory of details, but a summarized impression of a personality; and
the more vivid the impression, the less likely is it to be distracted
by a number of details. We are impressed by the general significance of
the personality, and note only those details that most contribute to it;
the details that are themselves most significant and characteristic.
Such was Hals’s way of seeing his subject; and, if it resulted in a very
vivid impression in the case of an individual portrait, how much more
when it embraced the complicated impression of a group! The latter, as a
matter of fact, does include more than any eye could possibly embrace in
a single act of vision; but this was a necessary concession to the
difficulties of the problem, which was to effect a compromise between
the conflicting claims, on the one hand, of the group as a whole, and,
on the other, of each of the individual units composing it. Admitting
the need of this reconciliation of opposites, we can scarcely hesitate
to acknowledge the vividness of the total impression and the no less
vivid impression of each one of its component units.
When we analyze the principle of this method of seeing, it is found to
be that of relativity. In selecting this or rejecting that the artist
has been guided by its more or less of value in relation to the whole.
The composition, in fact, is an adjusted balance of varieties of values;
an interlocked scheme of mutual relations; shrewdly calculated to assert
the significance of the whole without undue impairment of the varying
character of the parts. And this principle, thus applied to the whole
composition, operates also in the treatment of every part. Whether it be
the folds of a sash, the modeling of an arm in a sleeve, the substance
and set of a ruff, or the construction of a face, each is attained by
observing the relation of the values. In this case, however, one uses
values, not to measure the amount of relative importance that they play
in the general scheme, but in the technical sense of the amount and
quality of light reflected from the several facets of the surface. Hals
chose to view his subject in a diffused light that permitted practically
no shadows, but reduced the whole to a tissue of more light and less
light, of higher and lower values. While this sounds like the method of
the modern _plein-air_ painters, which has been evolved from the example
of Hals and Velasquez, it is not quite the same; for Hals does not
represent the light as being independent of the figures and enveloping
them, but still adheres to the old convention of making the figure
itself a center of light, as, for instance, a lamp is. Thus in one of
his groups, where a window appears at the back, the light beyond it is
of lower value than that which illumines the figures; and, in another
case, a landscape presents a darker background. But, having adopted this
convention, he adheres to the logic of it, and, like the modern painter
who has followed his example, but with the difference that he tries to
represent the effect of _plein-air_, models his forms in colored light
by the juxtaposition of the various values.
And it is characteristic of Hals that in doing this he overlooks minute
distinctions of value, seizing only the most salient ones and laying
them on the canvas with a broad brush and a remarkable decision. Thus
his technique presents a bold and vigorous generalization of the values;
often conspicuous for what it omits, as when he indicates the back of a
hat or a ruff by a flat tone that is almost uninterrupted by contrasting
tones. It is a technique, in fact, that relies very largely on
suggestion; hence its stimulating character, for one’s own imagination
is invited to assist in the illusion.
Nor does this suggestive generalization involve the slovenliness or
crudeness of brushwork that often disfigures the modern impressionistic
picture. While a canvas by Hals should be viewed from some distance off,
it does not offend at close range. On the contrary, one can enjoy the
orderliness and finesse, the result of fluency and assurance, that the
brushwork reveals, the ensemble having that quality of perfected
craftsmanship which characterizes the whole Holland School. And, though
Hals is scarcely to be classed as a colorist, the compositions being
decked with color rather than interwoven of color, yet his color has a
distinctly positive charm. For he takes so frank a delight in local
colors, whether gravely or gaily sumptuous, preserves their purity of
hue and invests them with luminousness. His color-schemes, too, have
this distinction, that, for all their bravery of show, they are never
commonplace and seldom without a clear suggestion of virility.
A unique opportunity of tracing the development of his style is
presented by the series of corporation pictures at Haarlem. I will not
attempt a detailed description of each, but rather recall the
impressions that were jotted down in the presence of them. The earliest,
then, is _The Banquet of the Officers of the Archers of St. George_,
dated 1616, when Hals was thirty-two. How magnificent the display of
still-life, the table-cloth, fruit, dishes, and goblets painted with
such skill and evident delight; what a vigorous enthusiasm is manifested
in the treatment of the uniforms, mostly black, and the scarfs of white
and crimson silk! Each head is strongly characterized, and so are the
hands. The heads are so disposed that they form a band across the
picture, below which another band contains the more sprinkled
arrangement of the hands. Two of the latter, close together near the
center of the table, form the nucleus from which the lines of the
composition radiate. The composition, in fact, is quite formal, and the
heads, one notices, are lighted from the side and constructed of shadow
as well as light; meanwhile no light comes in from the window at the
back, through which appears a landscape, less vividly lighted than the
scene indoors. Indeed, the whole arrangement is still influenced by the
arbitrary devices of the studio; nor does one fail to note that the
space occupied by the heads is flattened almost into one plane, as a
modern photographic group is apt to be.
These points are emphasized by a comparison with Nos. 117 and 118,
painted eleven years later. _The Banquet of the Officers of the Archers
of St. George_, this time, is presented in an interior without a window
visible. The whole apartment seems to be filled with lighted air; the
heads are no longer so obviously arranged to secure a contrast of dark
against light and light against dark; they are evenly illuminated, and
take their places justly in their several planes. For the planes here
extend farther back, and the composition is more varied, with less
suggestion of studied artfulness. Moreover, the treatment of the
costumes has become finer, the blacks especially yielding a variety of
delightful grays that give increased sparkle and animation to the
color-scheme. The flesh parts also are more luminous, and reveal a
greater fluency of brushwork, as if the artist had “got there” with more
ease and rapidity. The effect of all this is very arresting and
satisfying until one examines _The Banquet of the Officers of the
Archers of St. Andrew_.
The latter belongs to the same year, 1627; but the artist has surpassed
himself. Here the faces literally scintillate with animation of color.
Those of the other picture are discovered by comparison to be less
illuminated; after all, they have been modeled to some extent with
shadow, and the flesh in parts is inclined to be greenish gray or drab.
The hands also in the latter picture have more expression and a more
individual characterization, while the gestures are more natural and
spontaneous. The composition, too, is at once more varied and more
coördinated. Again, as in both the previous pictures, the nucleus of it
is a hand; in this case the center of two diagonal axes. But, while the
design is geometrical, the naturalness of the grouping is quite
extraordinary in its mingling of ease and propriety. Further, the color
masses are more inventively arranged; their spotting is more effectively
distributed, and the gaiety of the color is prolonged into the lower
part of the composition. This picture commemorates the banquet given by
the corps on the eve of its departure to the siege of Hasselt and Mons.
Six years later Hals painted a _Reunion_ of the same corps, though only
one member appears in both scenes. It is Captain Johan Schatter, who in
the earlier picture is seated in front of the table, facing left. He
occupies the same position in the later group,
[Illustration: REUNION OF THE OFFICERS OF ST. ANDREW FRANS HALS
HAARLEM MUSEUM]
but is now standing and looking over his shoulder toward the spectator.
He has exchanged his costume of black and golden brown, with its scarf
of rose and white, for a snuff-colored jerkin, pearl-gray under-coat,
and a sky-blue sash and feather; and the difference is reflected in the
superior delicacy of color that distinguishes the later picture.
In this _Reunion of the Officers of the Archers of St. Andrew_ the
corporation pictures reach their highest water-mark. The background,
however, of brownish-olive foliage, showing through an opening some red
roofs against the sky, is dry in color and lacking in luminosity. The
heads, in consequence, do not present the same suggestion of being
enveloped in light as those in the previous picture. In what, then, does
the superiority of this acknowledged masterpiece consist? Comparing it
with the earlier examples, we discover that its color-scheme of blue and
amber, while less resplendent, is more choice, delicate, and subtle, and
that the loveliness of color has been made contributory to the
characterization of the figures. This is scarcely to be appreciated from
the photographic reproduction, but in presence of the original one has a
lively sense of it. There is no suggestion of the display of color
having been considered by itself or as itself an end; the tonal harmony
so accords with the harmony of expression that characterizes the
separate individualities of the group that tone and expression are in
complete unity. Again, as a result or, more probably, a cause of this
harmony of expression, there is a complete simplicity of attitude and
gesture. “What shall I do with my hands?” Any one who has stage-managed
amateur theatricals knows how frequently this question is asked by the
performers. In nine cases out of ten the best advice, though the hardest
to follow, is to do nothing. It is just the fact that the members of
this group are so admirably doing nothing which gives at once such a
naturalness and so high a distinction to this picture.
Here, in fact, we touch perhaps the clue to the whole superiority of
this canvas. In one word, it is control; that almost unconscious
self-control on the artist’s part which results from his consciousness
of assured capacity. He has won beyond the point of experiment, beyond
the later temptation to indulge in display of knowledge and skill; he
has so absolutely acquired both and attuned the one to the other, that
the tricks and devices of his craft no longer sway his imagination; he
shows, in fact, his mastery not so much by what he does as by what he
withholds; he has reached in this great work a plane of extraordinary
artistic conscientiousness. The picture, in fact, has that appearance of
inevitableness, that suggestion of having grown rather than of having
been made, which is the highest expression of genius. It represents Hals
at his zenith. The date is 1633 and the artist’s age forty-nine.
The next picture, _Officers of the Archers of St. George_, is dated
1639, six years later. It is conspicuously inferior not only to the
masterpiece (that were excusable), but to all the preceding works. It
represents a falling off not so much in actual craftsmanship as in
artistic morality. The artist appears to have been satisfied to do less
well than he could; to do, in fact, as little as he might. He has saved
himself expenditure of invention in the composition by stringing the
figures out in a line across the front, and raising another line of
figures behind them; this having been the niggard, unimaginative
arrangement of the older corporation pictures, from which his other work
had presented so happy a departure. Correspondingly the heads, while
forcible in characterization, are lacking in luminosity, and the fabrics
are without vivacity. The general effect is stockish; the breath of life
and of art, as Hals could suggest both, is absent.
Nor in the next picture, dated two years later, the _Regents of the
Hospital of St. Elizabeth_, do we detect the true Frans Hals. The faces
are trickily modeled, brilliant high lights being contrasted with heavy
greenish-drab shadows; and the figures are lumpish, except the second
from the right, which alone reveals sympathy and enthusiasm.
Of the last two groups nothing need be said but that they are the work
of a veteran of eighty years, whose hand has lost its cunning, while his
brain, no longer active, retains only some wavering recollections of its
original activity.
The important point to be suggested in conclusion is that Hals’s best
period included the years from 1625 to 1635; that after the latter
period this enthusiasm waned, and his work became too often perfunctory.
In such cases the flesh parts exhibit an uninspired use of green lower
tones that have a tendency to become drab; features are often crudely
emphasized by a stroke or dab of exaggerated value, and luminosity has
faded into a dull, sometimes lumpish inertness. Even so, however,
compared with the work of other Hollanders, apart from Rembrandt, it
still had a quality and a character that render it distinguished; but
much of this distinction disappears when you compare him with himself,
the later with the earlier Hals. Many of his portraits suggest the
perfunctoriness of a man who has got his method down pat, and tediously
repeats it. In a word, his technique was so personal and so dependent
upon the mood of the moment that it needed the stimulus of enthusiasm,
and when this was absent, the vitality of the technique became
impaired.