Frans Hals' 17th century influence on modern artists

The renovated Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem staged a special exhibition in 2018-9: Frans Hals and the Moderns. Thank you to the Exhibition Catalogue and The French Life.

In 1868 Frans Hals (1582-1666) was “rediscovered” by the influential French jour­nalist-art critic Théophile Thoré. Art critics had dis­re­garded Hals since he died in 1666. The Dutchman's inn­ovative painting style with his loose touch no longer fitted in with the prevailing academic style; au contraire, his loose painting style was ass­ociated with a licentious life­style (whether he ever lived a debauched life or not). So his paintings were worth little in the art market and Frans Hals’ name did not feature in most works about the Golden Age.         

Frans Hals, The Fisher Boy, 1632
Antwerp Museum.

Regentesses of the Old Men’s Almshouse, 

by 1664

Thoré (who was also helped rediscover Vermeer) dis­cussed Hals’ work in various publications, but articles for the in­fluential art magazine Gazette des Beaux-Arts had the most impact. In 1868 Thoré specifically cited Hals’ virtuosity and daring brushwork as an example to contemporary artists. Thoré was describing Hals’ Reg­entesses thus: "The life-size figures modelled in broad, flamboyant strokes, protruded out of the frame in relief. It was beautiful and almost frightening". His articles sparked renewed interest in Hals’ paint­ings and a reassessment of his style among artists. The price of his works rocketed up, and every respected museum and collector was eager to acquire a Hals.

After 1868, Hals was no longer seen as a drunkard. C19th painters like Courbet, Manet, Monet, Cassatt, Singer Sargent, Liebermann &Van Gogh admired him as an icon; he was worshipped by late C19th artists like McNeill Whistler, William Merritt Chase, Henri Fantin-Latour. With c80 loans from international museums, the Haarlem Show reflected the huge impact that Hals had on these modern painters. His paint­ings were set against responses to his work by artists painting in the late C19th, that other hey­day of painting, reveal­ing just how progressive and influential Hals was. Many painters, French and then German, English and American, travelled to Haarlem, which became a veritable place of pilgrimage for artists, where they could admire Hals’ work in the recently opened Gemeentemuseum (1862).

Two Officers, 1876

by Max Liebermann

Jan Six Gallery, Amsterdam

The 150th anniversary of this rediscovery was an opportunity to stage the Frans Hals and the Moderns exhibition. The modernists were impressed by his loose touch, which they saw as early impres­s­ionistic. The largest collection of Hals’ work, open to the public in the attic in Haarlem’s Town Hall, was popular.

Regentesses of the Old Men’s Almshouse were formally arranged around a table, but Hals' Regentesses looked aged and stiff, had florid complex­ions that seemed eerily lifelike and were full of watchful gazes. The paint­ing’s lack of fin­ish was later attributed to the artist’s infirm­it­ies – it was com­p­leted just before he died!   

van Gogh, Postman Joseph Roulin,1888
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Elements of the painting reappeared many times in the work of Hals’ imitators. Sargent’s study of the two rightmost figures hung in his studio until his death. When Whistler arrived, he asked for a set of small stairs so he might touch their faces. A copy by Manet has recently been recovered. The Frans Hals Museum used its space to convey Hals’ influence on late C19th artists, not by making const­ant comparisons on a grand scale, but through a close analysis for copying purposes. Each painter re-imagined Hals in a way that refl­ected his own ambitions.

Every artist recognised Hals’ bravura brushwork – a bold touch that left a light, ephemeral impression. His unblended application of colour seemed crude at close quar­t­ers, but from a distance it dissolved. The Impres­s­ionists wanted to emulate the effect and, without relying on mechanical reproduction, copying was a way to survey a work’s surface and stroke.

Van Gogh, who revered his Dutch colleague Hals, admired how he dashed off a thing and did not retouch it so very much. That he was wrong did not de­tract from the idea that the best pictures seen from nearby were but patches of colour side by side, and only made an effect at a certain distance. This suggested the image of Van Gogh darting back & forth before the works, mesmerised by how they zoomed in & out of focus! The tangle of lines com­p­rising the sitter’s limp, drooping hands in Postman Joseph Roulin (1888) explicitly recalled the the Regentesses' gaunt extremes.

Constance Wynne-Roberts, 1895

by John Singer Sargent, 

National Galleries Scotland

When Sargent visited the Town Hall in Haarlem in 1880, his copies of the original works became inexact, darker and more loosely rendered. Rather than closely duplicate Hals, he had hoped to capture the painter’s "essence". Sargent’s success as a portraitist was in part due to his inventive compositions; Sargent’s sense of character in Constance Wynne-Roberts (1895) conveyed echoes of Hals, whose subjects were often sympathetic.

For C19th realists, Hals’ interest in depicting typical Haarlem scenes merged into their wider perspectives on modern life. For the French painters, Hals’ candid depictions were emancipating; he was the Old Master authorising a modern’s desire to record the everyday. A less well-known American painter, Robert Henri, spent time in an artist’s residency in Haarlem, living out a Halsian existence and painting local citizens. Like Hals’ children, see Henri’s The Laughing Boy 1910, an image of innocent elation. The publication accompanying the exhibition tells of the urchin’s life in detail, since the theme of frivolous youth was as topical in the C17th Dutch Republic as it is in Australia now.

Boy with a Pitcher, c1865

by Edouard Manet

Art Institute Chicago

For the first time, 80 paintings by both Frans Hals and the C19th artists Hals inspired were shown together. All of the modernists in this exhibition seemed to have recognised the spont­aneity in Hals’ work, creating a closeness with the long-dead Haarlem painter.

The images came from the Frans Hals Museum.