RKD STUDIES

Even though all paintings presented in this catalogue have been discussed many times, there is still no clear demarcation of Frans Hals’s oeuvre. After decades of historical identification and photographic documentation of paintings, and after the publication of catalogue raisonnés by Bode (1883), Moes (1909), Hofstede de Groot (1910), Bode and Binder (1914), and Valentiner (1921, 1923), the first actual overview presenting surviving paintings were two exhibitions in the 1930s. In 1935, an exhibition in Detroit comprised 50 works, and in 1937, an exhibition in Haarlem brought 116 paintings together, including the large group portraits.¹ On this occasion, a number of experts noticed differences between what were undoubtedly major works and the many weaker executions. In the same year, the restorer Maurits van Dantzig therefore published a critical analysis.² He only accepted 33 paintings that were shown in the exhibition as executed by Hals himself. This restrictive assessment also influenced the art historian Numas Trivas, who clearly distanced himself from Valentiner’s 1923 catalogue comprising 309 entries – also including seven engravings and three drawings after works believed lost. Trivas’s catalogue of 1941 only presented 109 entries and was limited to the existing paintings only.³ Many works that had previously been attributed to Hals were excluded without further explanation. Consequently, Slive’s critical reassessment of the visual and documentary records, published in three volumes between 1970 and 1974, was a major step forward towards a comprehensive overview of Hals’s oeuvre.⁴ It readmitted many pictures that Trivas had dropped without comment. Even in instances where an attribution was rejected, the respective works were still listed and illustrated, together with the author’s reasons for doubt. With regard to the number of autograph paintings by Hals, Slive arrived at a total of 222. In addition, there was a list of entries for 20 lost pictures, and a catalogue of 81 ‘doubtful and wrongly attributed paintings’. Within each of the three groups, a number of pictures were described as replicas, variants and imitations of the works under consideration. However, several paintings were completely excluded from this comprehensive overview, where the case for acceptance had previously been well argued, or whose qualities had only re-emerged after restoration. These include the portraits already listed by Valentiner: Portrait of a son of Ghijsbert van Campen and Maria Joris (A2.5), Portrait of a man (A1.20) and Portrait of a man in the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth (A1.109) [1]. But also the two male portraits that were shown in the 1937 exhibition (A3.38, A3.21), the Boy pointing with his finger, wearing a beret (A1.81), the Head of a boy wearing a beret, formerly in the Wernher collection at Luton Hoo [2], the Girl with a straw hat [3] and the recently restored Young violinist (A4.2.51).

In the catalogue descriptions for the 1989-1990 exhibition, Slive extended and deepened the earlier references, but did not move away from his earlier list of works.⁵ Also very little changed in the shorter version of his catalogue that was published in 2014, a few months after his death.⁶ This second edition is restricted to an incomplete selection from the oeuvre that was considered autograph by Slive, and leaves out the 1974 catalogue that had included many pictures he had dubbed as doubtful. Therefore, this edition has only been referenced here in cases where it includes either new additions or particular comments on specific paintings.

Slive’s achievement lay in the uncovering of the historical content and context of Hals’s pictures, thus opening a new and fresh approach for researchers and the interested public. This was an enormous step forward, both in generating attention from a wider public as well as for academic research. In addition, the documented history of the paintings was systematically recorded. This also inspired the current author’s research. Inspired by the visit to the 1962 Hals exhibition and Slive’s accompanying catalogue, I devoted my time to writing my doctoral thesis at the University of Munich from 1966 onwards. My intention was to present an assessment of the individual style of Frans Hals’s works, which seemed so distinctive to me that I aspired to resolve any remaining contradictions as well as to close gaps in the attributions.

Hals’s production over 50 years of activity shows an exceptionally consistent development that anticipated the ex pressive vocabulary of modernism from early on. At the same time, my intention was also to approach a hitherto unexplained phenomenon of modern European painting, based on this exemplary individual development of pictorial modes of expression. Hals’s increasingly idiosyncratic and at the same time progressive format of representation seemed a particularly rewarding subject to me. Led by my own experience in painstakingly copying a late work by Hals, the Portrait of a man Zürich (A1.129), my analysis of autograph works by this painter became more and more restricted. My doctoral thesis was published as a catalogue raisonné in 1972 and comprised 168 entries for autograph works by Hals and 37 for copies and engravings after lost originals.⁷ Over the following years, I attempted to collect as much detailed photographic documentation as possible of Hals’s original works and of the output of artists from his circle. My observations about Hals’s painting technique and expression in artworks attributed to him took place during a phase of newly systematic restorations and research into paintings, as well as the development of technically simplified colour photography. Based on my comparisons, I presented a further reduced list of 145 autograph works in my 1989 catalogue.⁸

By then, this resulted in significantly different catalogue raisonnés by Slive and me, as Eddy de Jongh expressed it: 'Grimm sees to be writing about a completely different artist from that of Slive'.⁹ The contrast between my ‘Frans Hals’ and that of Slive was rooted in the difference in our respective objectives. Slive’s attributions were primarily founded on historical findings and traditional references. They were based on contemporary and later documentation, reports and records, the preserved signatures of the paintings and the inscriptions of the engravings, especially those from the picture’s time of origin. This core of documentation was complemented by works that were secure, based on historical records, and those pendants and comparative pieces that were stylistically undisputed. Nevertheless, as with so many other ‘Complete Works’ of past artists compiled in a similar way, the results appeared inconsistent. This was neither changed by recent restorations nor by scientific and technical examinations. This discordance of inherited concepts not only applied to Frans Hals, but in equal measures to recently attributed oeuvres of Rubens, Van Dyck and Rembrandt. The reason was and is to be found in the different production methods of earlier centuries, where a craftsman would often share the work with several others, as opposed to the modern ideal of ‘artistic’ authenticity. The ‘artist’ of the modern era follows a creative ideal that is expressed consistently, in as uniform a style as possible.

While Slive focused on Hals’s oeuvre as a result of thorough inspection of historical attributions, I concentrated on a strict demarcation of ‘artistic’ individuality, that is, a unique quality of execution that I sought to apply as a measure of attribution. Based on detailed images of perfectly preserved areas and the counter-documentation of similar elements with a clearly weaker execution, I was convinced that I would be able to isolate a homogeneous core of what had been associated with Hals to date. I felt justified by the remarkably consistent development of representation that became evident in the consecutive sequence of dated works or works that were datable through their characteristics. Unfortunately, the result was unsatisfactory, as many undoubtedly autograph works that were documented as by Frans Hals or recorded in contemporary engravings now slipped into the zone of imitations, mere copies or even forgeries. Consequently, Montagni’s catalogue of 1974 attempted a mitigating compromise between my strict stylistic division and Slive’s list of works from 1970/1974.¹⁰ It comprised 184 entries on paintings preserved to date. By including 30 engraved reproductions and copies of lost works, the total rose to 214 catalogue entries. But the differences in opinion were not resolved – a new approach was required.

1
Frans Hals (I)
Portrait of a man, c. 1643-1644
Hanover (New Hampshire), Hood Museum of Art, inv./cat.nr. 2009.78.1
cat.no. A1.109

2
Workshop of Frans Hals (I)
Head of a boy wearing a beret
panel, oil paint, 29.9 x 29.9 cm
sale London (Christie’s), 7 July 2009, lot 5
cat.no. A4.2.35

3
Workshop of Frans Hals (I)
Girl with a straw hat
panel, oil paint, 36.2 x 31 cm
Remagen, Arp Museum Bahnhof Rolandseck, inv.no. GR 1.285
Collection Rau for UNICEF, Photo: Horst Bernhard
cat.no.A4.2.36