Whether he was a pupil of Cornelis Cornelissen, Hendrick Goltzius, and
Karel van Mander (the Dutch Vasari), is not known with any certainty,
and no picture painted by him earlier than 1613, when he may have been
thirty-three years of age, is known to-day. Early in the year 1616,
when he painted his famous _Banquet of the Officers of the St. Joris
Shooting Guild_, one of his early masterpieces still preserved in the
small gallery at Haarlem, he was summoned before the Burgomaster of the
“town of the tulip,” and reprimanded for his cruelty to his first wife.
Exactly a year later he married a second time, and as the years went on
he became the father of at least six sons who adopted the profession
of the painter but earned no permanent success. The Louvre possesses
no example of his Doelen-pieces of archer-groups which won him his
earliest fame in his own country, but is fortunate enough to contain
the famous _Gipsy Girl_ (No. 2384, Plate XXVII.), which alone would
have earned for him the title of “the master of the laugh.” It passed
through the Ménars sale in 1792 for 301 livres. The three pictures of
the Beresteyn family were bought for £4000 in 1884, when his paintings
were not as highly prized as they are to-day. They give an excellent
idea of the virility his art had attained by about 1629. The best of
these is the _Portrait of Nicolaes van Beresteyn_ (No. 2386), which is
inscribed, “AETAT SUAE 40. 1629.” His hands are superbly painted; while
the companion _Portrait_ (No. 2387) of his wife is equally striking.
The large and imposing _Portrait-Group of the Beresteyn Family_ (No.
2388) is marred by the excessive use in places of a strong red, and has
been enlarged by the addition down the right side of the canvas of a
strip about fourteen inches broad, but yet shows a certain felicity of
grouping, and a joyous and exuberant outlook. _The Portrait, of René
Descartes, the French Philosopher_ (No. 2383) is so simple in treatment
and so easy in pose, that it makes an instant appeal to the student.
Another _Portrait of Descartes_ (No. 78), by Sébastien Bourdon, is
in this gallery, and a third was in the Arsène Houssaye collection.
The _Portrait of a Lady in a Black Dress_ (No. 2385, Plate XXVIII.)
is unaffected and lifelike, while the subtle and hasty brushing in of
the gloves could only have been done by a great painter. It seems to
have been generally overlooked that a study for this picture is in the
collection of Lord Ronald Gower, and has for some time past been on
loan to the FitzWilliam Museum, Cambridge. In the study, however, the
artist had not yet thought of the gloves.
In 1654, Hals had to appear before a public notary of Haarlem at the
instance of his landlord, who sued him for debt. The great Dutch
painter in his testimony affirmed that his only possessions were two
pictures by Vermander and Van Heemskerck, and three by himself and one
of his sons, as well as three mattresses and bolsters, a cupboard and a
table! The Louvre exhibits no pictorial record of Hals’s latest phase,
when he was deserted by his friends, neglected by art patrons, and no
longer possessed any inner moral support.
The colouring of his early portraits is vigorous, the tone deep,
and the execution careful; gradually he employs richer colouring,
subordinates the local colours, and becomes broader in treatment. From
about 1650 his olive-greens gradually take on a more ash-grey hue,
until we are inclined to the belief that if the master had been
able to dispense with colour altogether, he would have willingly done
so. It is then that the colours on his palette, like the outer world,
became grey and black for him.
[Illustration:
PLATE XXVIII.—FRANS HALS
(1580?-1666)