F rans Hals is being rediscovered, once again and anew. From his adopted home in Haarlem in the burgeoning Dutch Republic, the 17th-century master transformed portraiture with a new style for a new age. With bold brushstrokes and novel animation, he captured pioneering contemporaries including the militia volunteers resisting Spanish rule and members of the flourishing merchant class upturning social hierarchies.
Following his death in 1666, however, his star fell quickly. Inaccurate posthumous biographies cast Hals as an abusive and alcoholic troublemaker before he was largely forgotten for two centuries. Thankfully, in the 1860s, the efforts of critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger triggered a reputational and artistic re-examination. Hals’ fresh, characterful depictions found favour with the Impressionists and Realists and have underpinned his popular appreciation ever since.
Recent years have seen a body of new scholarship emerge to accompany major exhibitions at the Wallace Collection in London and Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. As the National Gallery in London presents the most comprehensive show yet – featuring a historic first-ever loan of The Laughing Cavalier, 1624 – the Wallace Collection’s director Dr Xavier Bray met Chloe Stead, Sotheby’s global head of private sales, Old Masters Paintings, to discuss Hals’ modern appeal.
SOTHEBY’S MAGAZINE: Could you speak to the historical moment that created the Dutch Golden Age in art?
CHLOE STEAD: It’s one of the most exciting moments in art history, where commissions and the market were driven not by the demands of nobility or the church, but instead by the desires of a burgeoning middle class. These weren’t one-off luxury goods – a huge volume of art was created in the 17th century, with works hanging on every family’s walls in the Netherlands. That’s why so many of Hals’ sitters are these relatable figures rather than abstract, mythological or lofty characters.
XAVIER BRAY: Hals’ family moved to Haarlem when he was a young boy, probably around 1586, after the fall of Antwerp to Spanish forces. By the turn of the 17th century, due to many professionals – including artists – moving north to avoid religious persecution, Haarlem became a prominent cosmopolitan capital and vibrant artistic centre.
SM: Hals remained in Haarlem for most of his life. What sort of commissions did he win there?
CS: This huge demand for works of art and a large volume of artists meant an infrastructure grew. Guilds developed in different cities, and the Haarlem St Luke’s Guild, of which Hals was part, was one of the most active. Through these guilds came connections, commissions and a degree of status. From the second decade of the 17th century, Hals started winning important civic commissions, including portraits of the burgomasters [mayors of Dutch towns] and military men who defended the city from the Spanish, which were the catalyst to his career.
XB: As war became more distant, the militia groups were more of a place for business, almost like a club. What Hals does wonderfully is break the formality of traditional portraits – he captures these men having dinner, conversing, standing and engaging with the viewer. That was something nobody had really done before. Banquet of the Officers of the St George Civic Guard in 1616 is a key departure point.
SM: It is interesting that he remained in Haarlem but was able to draw sufficient business, while Rembrandt and others were willing to move their households in pursuit of patrons.
CS: We’ve got very limited sources about what Hals was like, but we do know that he was quite a singular sort of character and perhaps demanding of the people he was painting. There are anecdotes of him saying, “You guys have to come to me or I’m not painting you.”
XB: Haarlem was a burgeoning trading city. When we did the exhibition Frans Hals: the Male Portrait at the Wallace Collection, we tried to find out the professions of the subjects and a lot were brewers, textile merchants, traders or council officials.
SM: What are the hallmarks of Hals’ portraits stylistically and in terms of technique?
CS: They come under two categories: the handling and the way in which he’s portraying the character of the person. I think that, in both regards, he is truly unique. For me, the key is in the way Hals portrays these sitters in such a dynamic, engaging, relatable way, always with so much personality.
XB: Hals surprises as a painter. Often art historians try to demonstrate how an artist develops from a polished style to a loose style towards the end of their career. What I have observed in Hals is that each portrait has a different timescale and context. He’s not a painter who finds a formula and repeats himself. The technique is central, and he doesn’t look like any of his contemporaries. He finds his own style: he mixes colours and dilutes them, sometimes using the back of a brush to scratch onto the surface. He is incredibly experimental, particularly in the last part of his career – he painted well into his 80s. When I first studied Hals at university, he was described as versatile, slapdash and quick. This is a moment to reassess and realise he was masterful, premeditated and knew exactly what each brush stroke would do.
“Hals doesn’t look like any of his contemporaries. He finds his own style”
SM: Hals lived a long life, but towards its end he started to fall out of favour stylistically. He apparently remained well regarded as a painter, but his commissions had started to dry up, and he was living on a city pension. He was then, it’s often said, forgotten. Can you speak to his rediscovery in the 19th century?
XB: He was reappreciated at a time when certain painters were looking for an artist who was fresh, unpretentious, direct and captured contemporary life. Then an art museum, which would become the Frans Hals Museum, was founded in Haarlem in 1862. This is when the works of Hals and Velázquez – accessible at the Prado Museum in Madrid – became pilgrimage destinations for artists, particularly the Impressionists.
CS: The exhibition Frans Hals and the Moderns at the Frans Hals Museum [2018–19] brought together works by John Singer Sargent, Mary Cassatt, James Ensor, Max Liebermann, James McNeill Whistler and Gustave Courbet, many of whom had sat in those very galleries and made their own copies of Hals’ work there.
SM: There’s often a comparison made between Édouard Manet’s Le Bon Bock, 1873, and Hals’ The Merry Drinker, circa 1628–30. What is Manet borrowing from Hals?
XB: Manet doesn’t just copy, but he’s able to capture the spirit of the way Hals introduces informality. Le Bon Bock is a man who’s extremely happy with his situation: he’s smoking, drinking and looking you straight in the eye. I think the eye contact is really important. In The Merry Drinker, it’s that same kind of engagement: very direct but full of spirit. I would love to know who the merry drinker is because we talk about him as being a jovial figure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a real portrait, possibly a lead brewer, the Heineken man of the time.
SM: The Laughing Cavalier is Hals’ best-known work. What is the story behind its fame?
XB: The picture was acquired at auction in 1865 by Richard Seymour-Conway, the 4th Marquess of Hertford, who outbid Baron James de Rothschild at more than six times the estimate. It ended up within his collection in Paris, but no one really got to see it. The Marquess loved buying Old Masters and portraits such as those by Velázquez, Rembrandt and Van Dyck. But it was Richard Wallace, the 4th Marquess’ heir, who opened the work up to the public. When he was refurbishing Hertford House, where the Wallace Collection is located now, he lent more than 2,000 works to the Bethnal Green Museum in London, now Young V&A. It attracted more than 3.5 million visitors, Van Gogh among them. This great philanthropic move was much remarked upon in the press. That’s when the painting became The Laughing Cavalier. We don’t know who exactly said he was laughing – he’s actually smiling – but when Richard Wallace lent the work again in 1888 to the Royal Academy, the name had stuck.
CS: What does it mean to the Wallace Collection to have a work like this at the forefront of its collection? As a small museum, is it useful to have or does it come with its own set of problems?
XB: When people visit the Wallace Collection, many look for The Laughing Cavalier, so it’s a significant loan to be making. At the same time, it’s a unique moment not only to share it but to see it in context in a major monographic exhibition. It hasn’t left the collection since 1888, so it’s the first time that you will see it alongside other works by Hals, except for the exhibition that was at the Wallace in 2021. It’s going to be interesting to see how it fares alongside other portraits of a similar date, especially opposite the Banquet group portrait. My dream is to find the man who posed for The Laughing Cavalier among the motley crew.
SM: Is there another artist from this period who deserves a rediscovery?
CS: I think the rediscoveries that are most exciting at the moment are female painters of this period who were written out of art history. It’s interesting from an art historical and market point of view because it’s adding to scholarly research, and both institutions and private collectors are trying to acquire works to redress the lack of women in their collections. Michaelina Wautier is a good example. Many of her paintings were attributed to her brother, Charles (Carel) Wautier, or to other Flemish male contemporaries, and that’s now being thoroughly revisited.
XB: There are amazing Dutch artists – who get dwarfed by Vermeer, Rembrandt and Hals – that deserve rediscovering. Esaias Boursse is an interesting painter who, as well as painting Dutch interiors, was also commissioned by the Dutch East India Company to depict the people of Sri Lanka as the Dutch were colonising them. He is like a Vermeer in his ability to create atmospheric interiors but he paints poverty in way that is unequalled. We have a rare painting of his at the Wallace Collection.
“Broadly, the attractiveness of a work is a magic combination: the artist, how engaging the image is, its provenance and its condition.”
SM: Zooming out to the Golden Age at large, it amounts to a large proportion of the Old Master market. What do collectors prize in a work?
CS: Broadly, the attractiveness of a work is a magic combination: the artist, how engaging the image is, its provenance and its condition. When all four come together, an Old Master painting is enormously desirable to institutions and private collectors. In the current market, the top end of this category is as appealing as ever. The desire for a Hals work far outweighs availability – there are around 200 surviving works and fewer in private hands – so rarity is another factor in the market. Sotheby’s holds the record for a painting by Hals at auction: Portrait of Willem Heythuysen, 1635, which sold for just over £7 million in 2008.
XB: This is the picture that Baron James Rothschild had to settle with following his unsuccessful bid for The Laughing Cavalier.
CS: It’s an incredible painting of quite a strained balance. You feel as if he might tip off his chair or the whip will snap out of his hands, but he’s got a calmness about him as he gazes steadily at us. It’s only 18in by 14in.
XB: We mustn’t forget that Hals was part of a social context. Every detail – the hat, the positioning, the whip, the chair, the rapier, the gloves – meant something to the sitter. That’s what has been lacking in the past 50 years, and I hope the National Gallery show doesn’t just venerate but unpicks some of those clues of this great Modernist artist.
Cover image: Frans Hals, The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company, 1627, part of the Frans Hals Museum collection. Photo: Federico Guerra Morán/Alamy Stock Photo
Chloe Stead
Global Head of Private Sales, Old Master Paintings
chloe.stead@sothebys.com
