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He was born in Antwerp, the
son of Flemish parents who moved to Holland
after the city fell to the Spaniards in
1585. His parents had settled in Haarlem by
1591 and Frans Hals spent his long life there. Frans Hals was twice married, had at least ten
childred, and was constantly in financial
trouble. Houbraken says Frans Hals was `filled to
the girls every evening', but there is no
real foundation for the popular image of him
as a drunken wife-beater. His second wife,
however, was more than once in trouble for
brawling. During his last years Frans Hals was
destitute and the municipal authorities of
Haarlem awarded him a small annuan stipend
four years before his death.
Frans Hals was the first great artist of the
17th-century Dutch school and is regarded as
one of the most brilliant of all
portraitists. Almost all Frans Hals paintings are
portraits and even those that are not (some
genre scenes, and an occasional religious
picture) are portrait-like in character. He is said to have been taught in Haarlem by Karel van Mander, but there is no
discernible influence from him in early Frans Hals paintings, which are not numerous or well
documented.
From 1616 onwards there is no shortage of
dated or documented paintings and his artistic
development is clear. Frans Hals was at the height
of his popularity in the 1620s and 1630s.
During these decades Frans Hals made five large
group portraits of civil guards; one is in
the Rijksmuseum and the others are in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the only place
where one can get a comprehensive view of
his range and power.
In the 1630s his compositions became simpler
and monochromatic effects took the place of
the bright colors of the earlier Frans Hals paintings
(Lucas de Clercq and Feyntje van Steenkiste,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1635). The group
portrait of the Regents of the St Elizabeth
Hospital (Frans Hals Museum, 1641) sets the key
for the sober restraint of the late period,
when his Portraits became darker and his
brush-strokes more economical. The
culmination of this phase -- indeed of his
entire career -- are his group portraits of
the Regents and the Regentesses of the Old
Men's Alms House (Frans Hals Museum, c. 1664),
which rank among the most moving portraits
ever painted. By this time he was using in
his commissioned portraits the bold
brushwork and the alla prima technique which
early in his career Frans Hals reserved for genre
pictures. No drawings by him are known and
he presumably worked straight on to the
canvas. |
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