RKD STUDIES

Oil on panel, 46.4 x 37.5 cm
Sale New York (Sotheby's), 27 January 2012, lot 435

This painting was authenticated by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930) in March 1929 as an original Frans Hals.¹ However, it had already been sold several times as an authentic work in the 19th century, until ultimately being sold by Sotheby's New York in 2012 as by the hand of a follower.² The peculiar sideways turn of the head in relation to the shoulder line, and the implausible foreshortening of the collar, as well as the unconvincing facial modelling – simultaneously overemphasizing the modelling shadows and the cast shadows – make a creation in the 17th century unlikely. The loose brushwork in the hair and the somewhat angular treatment of the collar may be intended to allude to Hals. The painting appears as if the artist has taken the servant’s face from Rembrandt’s Syndics and depicted it in a more planar style [1].³ The overall impression is skewed and frozen.

X1

Oil on panel, 26.5 x 19 cm
Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1938.204

This painting came to the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1938 as part of the bequest of Mary Frick Jacobs (1851-1936). It was first reported in 1906, at the sale of the collection of Carl Gossmann († before 1904) in Cologne.⁴ Bode and Binder included it in their catalogue as an authentic work, while Valentiner accepted it with reservations.⁵ In the 1937 Frans Hals exhibition in Haarlem, which was curated by Valentiner, it was shown as a work by the master himself.⁶ Slive included it in his category of ‘Doubtful and wrongly attributed paintings’. He substantiated this on the basis of the 1957 scientific analysis, which proved that zinc white could be identified in parts of the original paint layer - a pigment that had only become available to artists in the early 19th century.⁷

X2

Oil on panel, 57.5 x 49 cm
Groningen, Groninger Museum, inv. no. 1931.0108

Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930) bought this painting in 1923 as a work by Frans Hals and stood by this attribution even after the painting was declared a forgery for containing water-soluble paint.⁸ After his death, it was bequeathed to the Groninger Museum together with the rest of his collection in 1931. Although the attribution to Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) is not entirely certain, it has been pointed out that the painting's introduction to the art market corresponds with Van Meegeren's methods.⁹

X3
Photo: Marten de Leeuw

Oil on panel, Ø 36 cm
Private collection, Netherlands

This painting was also accepted by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930) and presented in The Burlington Magazine as an authentic work by Frans Hals.¹⁰ After the artwork surfaced on the art market, it was soon revealed to contain modern nails and pigments and thus declared a forgery.¹¹ However, Hofstede de Groot stood by his attribution and famously claimed that he was as certain of his opinion as he was of The Night Watch's attribution to Rembrandt.¹² He later bought the forgery for his own collection, yet it was not mentioned in the lists of paintings which were bequeathed to the city of Groningen in 1931. It was most recently reported in 2023 in a Dutch private collection.

X4

Oil on canvas, 76 x 60 cm
Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, inv. no. SK-A-4242

This painting was amongst a group of forgeries by Han van Meegeren (1889-1947) that were initially undiscovered. According to Lammertse, this can be largely explained by the Second World War, the circumstances of which provided difficulties for Van Meegeren in bringing his creations to The Netherlands for sale. The paintings were only found after the war during a police search of Van Meegeren's atelier in Nice.¹³ Malle Babbe was subsequently obtained by the Rijksmuseum, where it remains today.

X5

Oil on canvas, 57.2 x 47 cm
Sale San Francisco (Butterfield & Butterfield), 22 November 1994, lot 2822

This painting was published as an authentic work by Frans Hals by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930) in 1924.¹⁴ In the following decades, it passed into the hands of several private collectors under this name. The motifs in this painting are derived from the Portrait of a family the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (A4.3.24). The boy’s face is a slightly adjusted imitation of the face of the standing boy on the left of the group portrait. His collar and buttons were borrowed from those of the black boy standing further to the right.

X6

Oil on panel, 80 x 55 cm
Formerly Brussels, private collection

This is a pasticcio based on several works by Hals. It was authenticated as an original in an unpublished expert report by Justus Müller Hofstede (1929-2015).

X7

Oil on panel, 32 x 24 cm
Sale Stuttgart (Nagel), 22-23 March 2001, lot 792

This painting was offered for sale as attributed to Frans Hals and dated to the 1650s, based on an expert report by Alfred Stange.¹⁵ It is freely based on the Portrait of a seated man in Ottawa [2], which it extends to a studio scene.

X8

Oil on panel, 27 x 22 cm, bears inscription and date upper right: Aetat.39 / A 1642
Art market, 2015

This painting – which appeared on the art market in 2015 – is also based on the Portrait of a seated man in Ottawa [2]. Even more than in the previous artwork, it lacks Hals's confident brushstroke and his simplifying rendering of shapes. Noticeable are the head, which is proportionally too large relative to the body, and the face, of which the lower parts are too large in relation to the forehead. Also, the rigid facial expression is very much unlike autograph paintings by Hals.

X9

Oil on panel, 34.2 x 26.8 cm, monogrammed lower right FH
London, The Weiss Gallery

This painting surfaced in 2008 and is based on Hals's late style. Its characteristics differ from both autograph executions and those in the group which has tentatively been attributed to Frans Hals (II) (1618-1669) in the present publication. It demonstrates an individual development of Hals's style. The patchy application of paint and a choppy surface appearance differentiate it from Hals's clarity and precision. The diagonal rhythm of movement of Hals's simplified brushstrokes is absent. The direction of the man’s gaze is also unfocused, and the area of the eyes is overall less emphasized than in portraits which are unequivocally by Hals.

The provenance of the picture is unclear. The last known owner was the Parisian art dealer Giuliano Ruffini, who provided fictitious earlier provenance information and got involved in a forgery affair concerning paintings attributed to Lucas Cranach (1472-1553), Parmigianino (1503-1540) and others. In 2010 the Musée du Louvre had the painting added to the list of national treasures and called for donations to support an acquisition.¹⁶ After the necessary funds failed to be collected, the portrait was sold to the London art dealer Mark Weiss. Subsequently, it was sold to an American private collector in 2011, with Sotheby’s acting as an intermediary. By 2016, the sale was rescinded based on the results of scientific pigment analysis. This examination identified copper phthalocyanine in the background, a pigment which had been invented in 1927.

X10