Did Hals & Rembrandt copy the other's art?

Since 1990 when I started my art history degree, of all the paintings in the Western World, my absolute favourites have been Dutch works painted in the C17th. Instead of painting saints and monarchs, Dutch artists then preferred ordinary but dignified people: milkmaids, merchants, inn-keepers and loving families with children. Because the new Dutch Republic was a wealthy, merchant driven society rather than a Catholic monarchy, art moved out of huge cathedrals and into smaller middle-class homes. This led to detailed genres like landscapes, seascapes and cozy domestic interiors. Even the Dutch still-lives with skilled glassware & porcelain reminded viewers of the fleeting nature of life, mixing tactile precision, philosophical mood and the simple things in life in small, finely crafted paintings (See Art of the Everyday: Realism in 17th-Century Dutch Genre Painting). Idealised splendour was absent, thankfully.

Frans Hals (c1583-1666) was one of the most famous and innovative painters of the C17th. His brushstrokes and compositions made his work unique and have been widely emulated. He created c220 works, including 175 individual portraits, and other militias and regents. The Dutch C17th artist Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) is world-famous for his emotionally charged and dramatic paintings, characterised by his brushstrokes, harsh light & dark contrasts. He mainly painted historical scenes & portraits, but also some land-scapes and still lifes - 300 paintings incl c100 self-portraits.

Portrait of a man by Frans Hals, c1635

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem is inviting locals and visitors to see the 2 artists in the Hals-Rembrandt Exhibition (Nov 2026-28th Feb 2027). 19 portraits are displayed in themed combinations side by side; viewers can assess how the 2 artists worked in different ways and achieved different results on canvas. This was true even though both artists were famed for their loose brush style and their life-like portraits. This show is attracting large crowds, so online reservation is highly recommended.

The exhibition was made possible thanks to a great loan of 5 paintings from Rijksmuseum. A highlight was the arrival of Rembrandt’s Syndics of the Drapers' Guild (1662), which shares similarities to Hals’ Portraits of the City Magistrates. Rembrandt’s portrait of Haesje Jacobsdr van Cleyburg (1634) hangs along-side Hals’s stately Portrait of Cornelia Voogt (1631) from Frans Hals Museum’s own collection. Rembrandt’s Johannes Wtenbogaert (1633) is hung besides Hals’ Portrait of a Man (c1635) from the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, which is being restored especially for the exhibition.

Rembrandt, Portrait of Johannes Wtenbogaert, 1633

Rijksmuseum

Also from the Boijmans Museum is Rembrandt’s Titus at a Lectern (1655), displayed alongside two paintings of Fishermen’s Children from the collections of Phoebus Foundation and Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp. The Mauritshuis in The Hague is lending Rembrandt’s The Laughing Man (c1629-30), displayed alongside Hals’ Laughing Boy with a Flute (c1630) from the German State Palaces in Schwerin. And see the painting Children Playing Music (c1628) by Hals, on display alongside Rembrandt’s The Music Party (1626). This early work is on a loan from the Rijksmuseum and on display at Museum De Lakenhal. The Six Collection is lending out Rembrandt’s The Girl in a Picture Frame from 1641.

The paintings are shown to visitors in an intimate setting, encouraging viewers to examine them at their leisure and to see more. The viewer is invited to look for the similarities and differences between the works eg in the posture, facial expressions and clothing of the subjects. They range from serious to laughing out loud, from understated to joyous. By looking at them in this way, the art-lover can discover more about the technical skill and emotional power of these masterpieces, through which Hals & Remb-randt achieved fame. The Hals Museum notes the main differences; Hals’ fast, snapshot-like, confident brushwork compares with Rembrandt’s deep, exploratory, meticulous layering.

The two artists didn’t live near each other. So on the basis of visual comparisons between paintings, Paul Crenshaw noted that Rembrandt & Hals certainly visited the Arundel collection and were most influenced by many Hans Holbein portraits in the collection. Connections are drawn to Rembrandt’s 1652 Large Self-Portrait in Vienna and to Hals’s likely pendant portraits of a woman in the Frick Collection.

Read and thanks to Frans Hals Museum presents its first exhibition bringing together Frans Hals and Rembrandt van Rijn. And thanks to Rembrandt and Hals Visit the Arundel Collection, in Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art.