Frans Hals
Master of the rapid brushstroke.
Frans Hals painted portraits in Haarlem with a loose, rapid technique that was centuries ahead of its time. His sitters laugh and come alive.
Frans Hals was born around 1582–83 in Antwerp. The family was Protestant and moved north to Haarlem after Antwerp was taken by Spanish troops in 1585. He may have been a pupil of the artist and writer Karel van Mander, but this is uncertain. He became a member of the painters' guild in Haarlem in 1610 and lived in the city for the rest of his life.
His breakthrough came in 1616 with a large group portrait of the officers of the St George civic guard. Earlier portraits of this kind had been stiff rows of faces. Hals showed the men at a banquet, interacting lively with one another. He painted several such group portraits, and most of them are now in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. His best-known single portrait is The Laughing Cavalier of 1624 in the Wallace Collection in London. The man is not actually laughing, but he smiles with a self-assured, almost challenging expression.
Hals painted quickly and with visible, loose brushstrokes. He applied the paint directly to the canvas without smoothing it out, and from a distance the strokes merge into living faces. His sitters laugh, drink, gesture and look as if caught in a single moment. He also painted popular characters, such as the laughing Malle Babbe in Berlin. His palette was often limited, with many shades of black.
He was married twice and had many children. Despite his success he was often in debt, and in old age he received an allowance from the town. His last great works, the group portraits of the regents and regentesses of an almshouse in Haarlem from 1664, are dark and grave. He died in 1666.
After his death he was partly forgotten. In the 19th century he was rediscovered by critics and painters. Manet was influenced by his free brushwork, and Vincent van Gogh wrote admiringly that he used twenty-seven different blacks. Hals is now regarded as one of the greatest portrait painters of the Golden Age.