RKD STUDIES

With the improvement in access to visual resources, also comes a change in approach and historical knowledge. It must be said, though, that this does not affect those documents relating to Frans Hals that have remained the same over more than one hundred years. Sources in manuscript and printed form dating from 1582 to 1679 were presented in their entirety by Irene van Thiel-Stroman in the catalogue of the international Hals exhibition of 1989-1990.¹ Sadly, no message in a bottle has since been received from 17th-century contemporaries that would give rise to a rewrite of entire chapters. We would be delighted to learn more about Hals's training and his unknown early works before 1611, about his activities in the many years from when no dated work has been preserved, about his pupils and colleagues and the way his workshop was run, or about the relationship with patrons and fellow painters. However, our knowledge about the surviving paintings and their sitters has increased significantly.

By now, many sitters have been convincingly identified, and many previously identified sitters have come to life as participants in an imaginary historical world through data about their life and their role in society. Recent examples are the married couple Michiel de Wael (1596-1659) (A1.22) and Cunera van Baersdorp (1600-1640) (A1.23) – reunited, at least in reproduction – and the cloth merchant Gijsbert Claesz van Campen († 1645) and his family (A2.3, A2.4, A2.5).² The large horizontal group portrait of the Van Campen family that had been cut into several pieces can now be reconstructed to form an approximate whole, of which Liesbeth De Belie recently presented a convincing demonstration.³ Frans Grijzenhout, in his turn, has identified a whole series of previously anonymous sitters: the Haarlem watchmaker Mathijs Jansz. Boeckels († c. 1654/1655) (A3.44) and his wife Maria Bastiaens van Hout († before 1666) (A3.45), the distiller and Mennonite preacher Gerrit Jansz. van Santen (c. 1583/1584 – c. 1653) (A3.35), the brewer Nicolaes Noppen (c. 1600/1606-1657) (A1.99) and his wife Geertruijt Gerritsz. van Santen (c. 1605/1610-1675) (A1.100), the yarn merchant Godfried van den Heuvel (c. 1594/95-1669) (A3.16), and his brother Nicolaes van Heuvel (c. 1603-1661), who was portrayed together with his wife Susanna van Haelwael (c. 1606/07-1667) and their children [1].⁴ Finally, Tico Seifert proposed to add the mayor François Wouters (1600-1661) (A3.50) and his wife Susanna Baillij (1627 or 1629 - before 1697) (A3.51) to this list of new identifications.⁵ The latter identification, however, was recently revoked by Pieter Biesboer, who, on the basis of archival documents, argued that the portrait more likely depicts Wouters's first wife Maria de Haen (1601/1602-1644).⁶

The identification of the flag-bearer of the Militia Company of District XI – also known as the Meagre company (A2.11), as the wealthy Nicolas van Bambeeck (1596-1661) for the first time, allowed a direct comparison between two great masters portraying an identical sitter, on the basis of autograph works by both Hals [2] and Rembrandt [3]. Dudok van Heel's identification also permitted conclusions with regard to the context for this commission and the difficult execution of Hals’s sole non-domestic large commission.⁷ Equally impressive were Dudok van Heel’s insights into the historical context of two military men who had been painted by Hals in individual portraits, the captains Jan Soop the Elder (1578-1638) (A1.83) and the Younger (1602-1655) (A1.95).⁸ Norbert Middelkoop was able to complement these results by his own research into the history of the Amsterdam civic guard paintings and their sitters.⁹ He succeeded in recognizing the man who stands in the center of the Meagre company – turned away from the beholder so strikingly – as Carel Gerard (1608-1673). An excellent portrait by Govert Flinck (1615-1660), dated 1639 supports this identification [4].¹⁰ In 2013, Steven Nadler pieced together the puzzle of Hals’s encounter with René Descartes (1596-1650).¹¹ Equally revealing was the identification of the laughing Malle Babbe (A1.103), which turned from a workshop painting assessed with varying degrees of seriousness into a likeness of the actual person Barbara Claes who was arrested in 1646 for ‘immoral behaviour’ and locked up in the Haarlem workhouse.¹² These and many more findings have enriched the historical context for Hals's works and changed our perception of the past.

Slive was the first to readjust this perspective. His iconographical and biographical research of historical picture content provided a fresh and concrete view of Hals's portraits and genre paintings, while inspiring many subsequent individual studies. In his catalogue raisonné published in three volumes from 1970 to 1974, as well as in his descriptions of works in the exhibition catalogues of 1962 and 1989-1990 we encounter excerpts of historical reality as they had been perceived by Frans Hals, the astute observer of fleeting moments.¹³ Not only did the knowledge about individual persons and circumstances shift, the perspective on paintings and their makers also became increasingly historical. Admiration for timeless masterpieces and the genius of their creators was replaced by knowledge about the historical purpose of paintings, their market and the workshop production. The creators of pictorial inventions admired today are increasingly less isolated but understood more from within a historical and cultural context. Their works were not made as ‘art’ for future museum visitors, but for contemporary purposes and spiritual needs.

Judging from the oeuvre known today, Frans Hals was a narrowly specialized painter who nevertheless repeatedly discovered visually appealing elements within his portrait commissions. This becomes particularly clear when browsing through the paintings in which his handwriting is discernible in the clothing, sashes, flags and weapons, and sometimes also on chair backs and in details of still life - as in the views of the tables laid for the Haarlem guild members or in the jugs and glasses of his drinking figures. The landscape backgrounds of his paintings were executed in a more minute manner and with less abstract visual effect by a number of equally specialized colleagues. Many of the backgrounds are attributable to Pieter de Molijn (1595-1661).

The commissioned portrait was a fundamentally profane and affirmative undertaking, artistically subordinate to the great themes of the spiritual world. Ever since the 15th century, profane portraits had become customary as an independent pictorial category. The identity of the sitter was indicated by inscriptions, as well as coat-of-arms, dress, attributes, appearance and gestures. This formula continued up to the era of Hals. From the patron’s perspective, different purposes overlap: ‘memoria’, that is devotional prayer for the sitter’s soul by their descendants; commemorative praise by contemporaries and following generations; the cultivation of family tradition through depictions of ancestors and relatives; current societal representation; and, finally, decoration. As religious customs subsided over time, the increasingly illusionistic portraits in the 17th century became effective media for sitters to create monuments of their own status and power. Typical examples are the life-size, full-length portrait of the cloth merchant Willem van Heythuysen (1585-1650) from c. 1625/1626 (A2.6) that was painted for his Haarlem townhouse, and his small-size portrait from c. 1634 (A3.22), of which four contemporary copies are known. One of those was commissioned from Frans Hals after Heythuysen’s death in 1650 and was since kept in the domestic quarters of the Hofje van Heythuysen [5], serving as a commemoration of the hofje’s benefactor. But all these memorials were uniquely made for specific locations and, with few exceptions, remained in private rooms. Unlike the pictures in today’s museums, in books, posters and on the internet, such representations only existed only in the awareness of local groups. The only exceptions were the portrait engravings which commemorated important figures of spiritual and intellectual life and which were distributed with up to 200 copies among a widespread public.

1
workshop of Frans Hals (I) and possibly Pieter de Molijn
Portrait of Nicolaes van den Heuvel, Susanna van Haelwael and their eldest children, c. 1635
canvas, oil paint, 111.8 x 89.9 cm
Cincinnati Art Museum, inv.no. 1927.399
cat.no. A3.29

2
Detail of cat.no. A2.11
Frans Hals (I) and Pieter Codde
Militia company of district XI, 1633-1637
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum
Codde added only a few delicate locks of brightly reflecting hair to the face that was executed by Hals

3
Detail of: Rembrandt
Portrait of Nicolaes van Bambeeck, 1641
canvas, oil paint, 111.5 x 90.5 cm
center right: Rembrandt. f./1641
Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, inv.no. 155

4
Govert Flinck
Portrait of a man, probably Carel Gerard (1608-1673), dated 1639
Private collection

5
workshop of Frans Hals (I)
Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen, c. 1635
panel, oil paint, 46.5 x 37.5 cm
upper right: FH
Brussels, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België, inv.no.2247
Photo: J. Geleyns
cat.no. A3.24