RKD STUDIES

Oil on panel, 14.5 x 10.8 cm
Dublin, private collection
Pendant to A4.1.1Aa [1]

This painting can be identified on the basis of its size and the traditional association as the pendant of the Portrait of Theodorus Schrevelius (A4.1.1Aa). It has been executed in a manner which is not that of Frans Hals, yet it could conceivably be a workshop painting. Interestingly, there is an excellent document for Maria van Teylingen’s (1570-1652) appearance, which is the magnificent 1625 Portrait of Theodorus Schrevelius and his family by Pieter de Grebber (c.1600-1652/53).¹ Based on this depiction, Maria van Teylingen can be identified in the present picture without any doubt.

Oil on panel, 14.5 x 11 cm
Sale London (Christie’s), 13 December 2002, lot 63

This variant is probably copied after the prime version of the Portrait of Maria van Teylingen, on which the variant in Dublin (B1) was also based.

B1a

Oil on canvas, 81 x 62 cm
Formerly Berlin, Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum, inv. no. 801D

This painting depicts three comedians during a stage performance. It was based on an unusual and therefore attractive early work by Hals, monogrammed and dated 1616, which Wilhelm Bode had seen and described in 1883.² Unfortunately, this picture was lost since. However, it’s composition is preserved in two variations. The present painting was accessible to researchers in the Berlin Gemäldegalerie until the Second World War. It was referred to as an early work by Willem Buytewech (c. 1591/1592-1624), an attribution which was widely accepted.

B2a

Oil on canvas, 78.5 x 60 cm, monogrammed and dated F H: 1616
Sale Amsterdam (Sotheby Mak van Waay), 23-25 April 1979, lot 76

This repetition of Hals’s composition of 1616 is probably identical with a painting sold at a 1881 Paris auction as attributed to Frans Hals.³ With respect to the background figure, the present variant corresponds more closely to Bode’s description of the lost original by Hals.⁴ According to Bode, this was ‘a jolly young man with thick hair’ and not a female figure, as is depicted in the Berlin version (B2). In any case, the merry young man in the background of the present painting reappears in the Merry company by Judith Leyster (1609-1660) of circa 1629, and equally, the seated man recurs in Young man holding a lily of 1640 [2].⁵

B2b

Oil on panel, 42 x 68 cm
Private collection

The open book on the table shows Hals’s figure of the rommel-pot player as a drawn and coloured figure study. Considering the stylistic features and subject, the format and execution of the drawing that was depicted by David Bailly (1584-1657) may correspond to Hals’s drawn model for the protagonist in his painting of the rommel-pot player (A4.2.1a and its variants) [3].

B3

Oil on panel, 37 x 36.7 cm
Abbeville, Musée Boucher de Perthes, inv.no. BdP 101
Pendant to A3.5c [4]

Presumably, this painting is a copy after a lost example by Frans Hals. The design of the hand and face corresponds to the master’s style and do not appear to be free imitations. The picture is created as a counterpart to Boy holding a flute (A3.5c), which is a copy after Laughing boy with a flute (A3.5).

Oil on canvas, 67 x 60 cm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv.no. SK-A-134

Hofrichter is convinced that the attribution of this painting to Judith Leyster (1609-1660) is correct, which had been suggested several times in older literature as well.⁷ She describes various similarities in style and subject matter which are indisputable, but which also apply to copies by other assistants from Hals’s workshop. Without question, Leyster’s later signed and dated Serenade of 1629 [5] is dependent on Hals’s model in so many characteristic details that Leyster must have had the composition in front of her to draw or copy it, rather than just seeing it in passing. But how long would a picture that was intended for sale, remain in the workshop?

The Leiden painter David Bailly (1584-1657) created three drawings after this workshop copy, which are dated 1624 [6], 1626 [7], and 1628.⁸ The first two are accessible today and repeat the original so precisely that they must have been made on the basis of the painted example. Bailly is therefore presumed to have been the owner of this painting, that is now in the Rijksmuseum. In any case, he must have had access to the picture for some time. Bailly’s 1624 drawing only surfaced in 2000 and established an even earlier terminus post quem non for the painted copy.⁹ With this in mind, Leyster – who was baptised on 28 July 1609 and would have been fifteen years old by 1624 – probably cannot be considered to be the author of this painting. It seems probable that another copy of Hals’s Lute Player existed, which Leyster could have studied either in Hals’s workshop or outside of it.

B4

5
Judith Leyster
The serenade, dated 1629
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. SK-A-2326

6
David Bailly after Frans Hals (I)
Lute player, dated 1624
New York City, Clement C. Moore
cat.no. D6

7
David Bailly after Frans Hals (I)
Lute player, dated 1626
Amsterdam, Rijksprentenkabinet, inv./cat.nr. RP-T-1886-A-562
cat.no. D6a

Oil on panel, 33.5 x 28 cm,
Sale London (Sotheby’s), 17 December 1998, lot 367

Slive’s view of the present artwork as being based on Wallerant Vaillant’s (1623-1677) mezzotint [8], instead of on Hals’s painted example [9], was most likely based on the matching motifs in the print.¹⁰ However, the present painting shows many elements of the colouring which can only have been taken from the painted version. These include the purple and green shades of the boys’ clothing, the red edges of the music scores, the blue beret, and the red colour accents in the faces. Sadly, the original painting is so damaged by later overpainting that the impression of its original colours is limited.

B5

8
Wallerant Vaillant
Two boys singing
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv./cat.nr. RP-P-1911-93
cat.no. C12

9
Frans Hals (I)
Two boys singing, 4. 1625-1625
Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel), inv./cat.nr. GK 215
cat.no. A1.24
© Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

Oil on panel, 34.5 x 31.5 cm
Possibly Brussels, art dealer Arthur de Heuvel, by 1975

Slive mentioned this painting because it documents the adoption of Hals’s motifs by later followers – in the way the individual children’s heads were painted, referencing to the Two boys singing in Kassel (A1.24) – and because it can be regarded as proof of a talented Amsterdam follower imitating Hals.¹¹

The painting can be dated c. 1663, because of Lodewijk van der Helst’s (1642-after 1684) highly similar drawing in the Album Amicorum of Jacobus Heiblocq (1623-1690), which is dated 1663 [10].

B6

Oil on canvas, 85.1 x 100.5 cm, signed lower left JSteen
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Gemäldegalerie, inv. no. 795D

There is a notable detail in the background of this genre scene: a painting of a smoking woman, reminiscing of Hals’s Malle Babbe (A1.103). It is hung together with a picture of Peeckelhaeringh that is consistent with the original Hals painting in Kassel (A1.50), at opposite sides of a large landscape painting. The differences in Steen's Malle Babbe, compared to the currently known variants by Hals and others have led to the argument that there must have existed another version. However, Slive and Michael Eissenhauer have convincingly argued that Steen likely adjusted the composition of the original Malle Babbe so that, together with Peeckelhaeringh, the two paintings depict two bad habits that are also referenced to by the adult figures in the foreground of Steen’s scene: smoking and drinking.¹² As such, the paintings on the back wall perfectly connect to the moral lesson that Steen aimed to convey with this scene: bad examples set by adults, will be imitated by children. Or, in other words: as the old sing, so pipe the young.

B7
Photo: Jörg P. Anders; Public Domain Mark 1.0

Oil on canvas, 63.8 x 51.4 cm
London, Royal Collection Trust, inv. no. RCIN 404807

In the past, this painting was referred to as being a preparatory study for Hals’s life-size Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen in Munich [11].¹³ Even after Bode and Binder’s 1914 catalogue refuted this assumption, Valentiner and Trivas kept supporting an attribution to Frans Hals.¹⁴ The less skillful and harder style of painting is an argument against this, as is the fact that negligible details in the background of the large Heythuysen portrait make an appearance in the present work. On this basis, Slive considered an attribution to Judith Leyster (1609-1660) and was seconded by Hofrichter with the additional argument that the upper left-hand corner – from either the Heythuysen original or the present picture – was copied in Leyster’s Merry Couple, which is signed and dated 1630.¹⁵ A free repetition of elements from the Heythuysen portrait by a pupil is certainly conceivable; it assumes the accessibility of the original in Hals’s workshop. However, this would no longer have been possible once the original portrait was delivered and moved to the patron’s exclusive private rooms.

B8
© His Majesty King Charles III 2023

Oil on canvas, 66.4 x 44.5 cm
Los Angeles, The Hammer Museum at UCLA, Willitts J. Hole Collection

Probably copied after the variant in the Royal Collection (B8).

B8a

Oil on panel, 13.8 x 10.8 cm
Cincinnati, Cincinnati Art Museum, inv. no. 1978.432

Directly based on Hals’s painting in Edinburgh [12], this variant, bearing the date 1627, depicts Verdonck in an angry and threatening mood. He wears a dignified ruff and is set inside a painted oval in a monumental manner. This painting establishes a terminus ante quem for Hals’s original depiction of Verdonck. More than the example, the present painting must be understood as an expression of partisanship for the sitter, who was probably in prison at the time.

B9

Oil on canvas, 57 x 42.5 cm
Sale Paris (Thierry de Maigret), 6 December 2024, lot 82

This variant of Hals's original depiction of Verdonck (A1.34) [12] shows very free brushwork, which should be visible even better once the painting has been cleaned. The execution differs from works by Hals's own hand, but it shows a talented hand that is close to him. Therefore, it is possible that this portrait was done by someone in Hals's workshop. It is certainly not a later variant of the Edinburgh picture, but rather a painting that was executed at the same time, and based on the same model. The date can definitely be set around 1627, because there seems to have been an interest in the figure of Verdonck at that time and the painterly style fits with that period as well.¹⁶

B10
© Gift of the Slive Family Trust