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VI. Summarize the text.
VII. Topics for discussion.
1. Dutch landscape.
2. Dutch genre painting.
3. Dutch still-life.
UNIT XV HALS (1581/85-1666)
Recognized today as one of the most brilliant of all portraitists, Frans Hals was probably born
in Antwerp and was brought to Haarlem as a child. Interested in human face and figure, Hals was
blessed with a gift for catching the individual in a moment of action, feeling, perception, or
expression and recording that moment with unerring strokes. Among his early commissions were
group portraits of the militia companies that had been largely responsible for defending the new
Dutch republic in the hostile world; these paintings radiate its self-confidence and optimism. Hals
usually shows the citizen-soldiers in the midst of the banquets. The compositions, picturing a dozen
or more males, mostly corpulent and middle-aged, each of whom had paid equally and expected to
be recognizable, were not conductive to imaginative painting. The predecessors of Hals had
composed these group portraits in alignments hardly superior compositionally to a modern class
photograph. It was the genius of Rembrandt to raise them to a level of high drama. But Hals in his
Banquet of the Officers of the Saint George Guard Company, of 1616 has a superb job within the
limitations of the traditional type. The moment is relaxed, the gentlemen turn toward each other or
toward the painter as if he had been painting the whole group at once, which was not certainly the
case. Massive Baroque diagonals - the curtain pulled aside, the flag, the poses, the ruffs - tie the
picture together into a rich pattern of white and flashing colours against the black costumes. Broad
brushstrokes indicate the passage of light on colour with a flash and sparkle unknown even to
Rubens.
The warmth of Hals's early style is seen in The Laughing Cavalier. The date 1624 and the
subject's age 26 are inscribed in the background, and since the Cavalier's diagonal shadow also falls
on it, it is clearly a wall. The Caravaggesque nowhere is thus converted into a definite here. The
wall is irradiated with light and seems insubstantial. The armours proclivities of the young man are
indicated by the arrows, torches and bees of Cupid and the winged staff and hat of Mercury
embroidered in red, silver and gold on the dark brown of his slashed sleeve, with his glowing
complexion, dangerous moustaches, snowy ruff and dashing hat, the subject is the symbol of
Baroque gallantry. The climax of the painting is the taunting smile on which every compositional
force converges.
The opposite of this glittering portrait is the sombre Malle Babbe, of about 1630-33. Nobody
knows who the old creature was or the meaning of her nickname. Often called an "old crone" she
might be from forty to sixty years old. Hals has caught her in the midst of a fit of insane laughter.
Possibly she is a town idiot and the owl on her shoulder is a symbol of foolishness. The expression
seized in a storm of strokes is rendered with a demonic intensity.
About 1664 when he was past 80, Hals showed a still different side of his character and ability
in the Regentesses of the Old Man's Almshouse. Painted almost entirely in black and white and
shades of grey, this solemn picture is united by diagonal movements. The painter had only
devastated faces and white collars of the women as component elements. Each of the subjects has
reacted in a separate way to age and experience, yet all participate in a calm acceptance of the
effects of time. In its simplicity the composition shows an expressive depth unexpected in the
generally excited Hals.
Make sure you know how to pronounce the following words:
Hals [
]; Haarlem [
]; Antwerp [
]; cavalier [
]; banquet
[
]; regentess [
]
NOTES
Banquet of the Officers of the Saint George Guard Company - "Портрет офицеров гильдии
святого Георгия "