RKD STUDIES

There is a parallel creation to Hals’s Merrymakers at Shrovetide (A3.1) which combines motifs and stylistic elements reminiscent of Hals and Willem Buytewech (c. 1591/1592-1624). It is reported through photographs of two similar variants and in the description of a lost version to which Wilhelm von Bode (1845-1929) referred to as the original in 1883.¹ According to Bode, this painting was signed with the monogram FH and dated 1616. It had been in a Belgian collection in around 1873, before being sold to a collector in the Unites States. Nowadays, a clear impression of the composition is only provided by the two paintings of the same size that were formerly in the Kaiser Friedrich-Museum in Berlin [97] and in a Sotheby’s sale of 1979 [98].

We are looking at a stage scene with three actors from the popular theatre. A link with the New York painting is apparent in the model of the male figure on the left, who appears in the former scene on the left as the Peeckelhaeringh character. This older man appears here in a different turn, not towards the viewer but facing the seated female figure. The perfect correspondence of the two depictions – down to the wart by the left eye – suggests there must have existed head studies from an unmistakable model [99] [100]. The forward bent posture of this male figure and the emphasis on the diagonal contours of his head and clothing create a lively, very ‘Halsian’ impression. The design of this figure is more coherent in the Berlin painting than it is in the New York canvas, including the right hand which is shown here more easily imaginable on the shoulder of his counterpart – as opposed to the coarse claw placed on an arm that is also too short. The man’s counterpart, an elaborately costumed young woman, fills more than half of the picture plane. She is stiffly positioned like a doll and executed in a very particular approach full of detail. Her narrow, long body and extended arms, as well as the execution of her face and hands are close to Buytewech’s style of representation, even though his female figures are generally depicted on a smaller scale [101] [102]. Accordingly, the Berlin painting was suspected of being an early work by Buytewech, and Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann (1923-2017) included it in his catalogue raisonné of Buytewech’s paintings as no. 1.² The attribution is plausible if we compare Buytewech’s typification of faces – as in the shape and slant of the eyes – with that of Hals [103] [104][105].³

99
Detail of cat.no. D3
Willem Buytewech after Frans Hals (I)
Fool in a frame with herrings, sausages, eggs and a foxtail, c. 1617
Paris, Fondation Custodia – Collection Frits Lugt
Compare to fig. 81 in chapter 1.7

100
Detail of fig. 97
after Frans Hals (I)
Merry trio, c. 1616
formerly Berlin, Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum

The observation above allows us to conclude that the composition of the Berlin Merry trio [97] was probably designed by Hals and was executed in his workshop. Even though there is no signature, the largely similar composition of the other variant [98] bears Hals’s monogram and the date 1616, a period matching the style of clothing of the figures and the presence of the male figure, who is datable on the basis of the Merrymakers on Shrovetide (A3.1). By 1616, Buytewech was already an independent master who had joined the Haarlem guild of St Luke’s four years earlier. In this instance, he has contributed the figure of an affected woman, as a counterpart to a strapping fellow who clearly matches Hals’s approach. The fact that this painting was classified as a copy in newer literature, most recently by Slive and Hofrichter, is not based on the quality of the execution but rather a continuing echo of the assessment by Bode.⁴ According to this argument, Frans Hals and Willem Buytewech had made a prototype on which the known repetitions were based. It is more likely though, that Bode saw either the painting that appeared later in the Sotheby’s sale, or a similar replica matching the details of his description. Slive’s assessment also hints at this: ‘it may be closer to the original than the Berlin copy’.⁵

Judging from today’s comparative possibilities, the Sotheby’s version is indeed a copy, painted more smoothly than the Berlin one. Both the angular brushstroke of Hals, and the style of folds by Buytewech appear more distinctly in the Berlin picture, which therefore seems to have been the model – and probably the first execution – for the Sotheby’s version that is simplified in some details, and not vice versa. In the Sotheby’s picture, simplifications were made in the collar and folds and the row of buttons in the man’s black coat [106] [107]. In addition, these changes also weaken the compositional elements that create an appearance of character, with a semblance of movement.

105
Detail of cat.no. A3.1
Frans Hals (I)
Merrymakers at Shrovetide, c. 1616-1617
New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art