"Frans Hals in the Metropolitan Museum" Showcases the Artist's Work & Influence

Written by Emily Burdett Friday, 30 March 2012 21:40

New York.- The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be hosting "Frans Hals in the Metropolitan Museum" from July 26th until October 10th. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the most important collection of paintings in America by the celebrated Dutch artist Frans Hals (1582/83–1666), whose portraits and genre scenes were famous in his lifetime for their immediacy and dazzling brushwork. This exhibition will present thirteen paintings by Hals, including two lent from private collections, and several works by other Netherlandish masters. Several of the Museum's paintings by Hals are famous, especially the early "Merrymakers at Shrovetide" (ca. 1616) and the so-called "Yonker Ramp and His Sweetheart" (1623), both bequeathed to the Museum by Benjamin Altman in 1913. Also included in the exhibition will be two loans from private collections in New York—the small, exquisite "Portrait of Samuel Ampzing" (1630), on copper, and the well-known Fisher Girl (1630–32).

A selection of other Dutch paintings from the Museum's collection and a few engravings will set Hals's work in the context of his native Haarlem and will help clarify how exceptional his animated poses and virtuoso brushwork were at the time. A portrait by Manet, inspired by Hals, will also demonstrate how strongly Hals anticipated Impressionist effects.

Frans Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp. Like many, Hals' family fled during the Fall of Antwerp (1584-1585) from the Spanish Netherlands to Haarlem, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Hals studied under another Flemish-émigré, Karel van Mander (1548–1606), whose Mannerist influence, however, is not noticeably visible in his work. At the age of 27, he became a member of the city's painter's corporation, the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, and he started to earn money as an art restorer for the city council. He worked on their large art collection that Karel van Mander had described in his book 'The Painting-Book'. The most notable of these were the works of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Jan van Scorel and Jan Mostaert, that hung in de St. Jans kerk in Haarlem. The restoration work was paid for by the city of Haarlem, since all religious art was confiscated after the iconoclasm, but the entire collection of paintings was not formally possessed by the city council until 1625, after the city fathers had decided which paintings were suitable for the city hall. The remaining art that was considered too "Roman Catholic" was sold to Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen, a fellow guild member, on the grounds that he remove it from the city. It was under these circumstances that Hals began his career in portraiture, since the market for religious themes had disappeared. The earliest known example of Hals' own art is the 1611, 'Jacobus Zaffius'. His 'breakthrough' came in 1616, with the life-size group portrait, The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company. His most noted portrait today is the one he made in 1649 of René Descartes.


In 1617, he married Lysbeth Reyniers, the young daughter of a fishmonger that he had taken in to look after his two children from his first marriage. They married in Spaarndam, a small village outside the banns of Haarlem, because she was already 8 months pregnant. Frans Hals was a devoted father and they went on to have eight children. Where Hals contemporaries such as Rembrandt moved their households according to the caprices of patrons, Hals remained in Haarlem and insisted that his customers came to him. According to the Haarlem archives, a militia piece that Hals started in Amsterdam was finished by another painter because Hals refused to paint in Amsterdam, insisting that the militiamen come to Haarlem to sit for their portraits. Although Hals' work was in demand throughout his life, he lived so long that he eventually went out of style as a painter and experienced financial difficulties. In addition to his painting, he continued throughout his life to work as an restorer, art dealer, and art tax expert for the city councilors. His creditors took him to court several times, and to settle his debt with a baker in 1652 he sold his belongings. The inventory of the property seized mentions only three mattresses and bolsters, an armoire, a table and five pictures (these were by himself, his sons, van Mander, and Maarten van Heemskerck).

Left destitute, the municipality gave him an annuity of 200 florins in 1664. At a time when the Dutch nation fought for independence, Hals appeared in the ranks of the schutterij, a military guild. It is possible that he received the privilege as thanks for painting that company 3 times. Hals was also a member of a local chamber of rhetoric, and in 1644 chairman of the Painters Corporation at Haarlem. Frans Hals died in Haarlem in 1666 and was buried in the city's St. Bavo Church. His widow later died obscurely in a hospital after seeking outdoor relief from the guardians of the poor.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially known as “The Met”) is one of the world's largest and finest art museums, visited by nearly five million people each year. Its collections include almost three million works of art spanning five thousand years of world culture, from prehistory to the present and from every part of the globe. The main building is located on the eastern edge of Central Park, along "Museum Mile" in New York City, but there is also a smaller second location, at "The Cloisters", in Upper Manhattan, which features much of the collection of medieval art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded on April 13, 1870, and first opened on February 20, 1872, housed in a building located at 681 Fifth Avenue in New York City. Under the guidance of its first board of directors, the Met's holdings, initially consisting of a Roman stone sarcophagus and 174 mostly European paintings, quickly outgrew the available space and in 1873 the museum moved from Fifth Avenue to the Douglas Mansion at 128 West 14th Street. However the growing collection required still more space than the mansion could provide, and in 1880, the Metropolitan Museum moved to its current site in Central Park. The original purpose-built Gothic-Revival-style building designed by American architect Calvert Vaux was not well-received. The building's High Victorian Gothic style was already going out of fashion by the time construction was completed, and the president of the Met termed the project "a mistake." Within 20 years, a new architectural plan, incorporating the Vaux building solely as an interior and stripping it of many of its distinctive design elements, was already being executed. Since then the building has been greatly expanded in size and the various additions now completely surround the original structure. The present facade and entrance structure along Fifth Avenue were completed in 1926. The Met measures almost 1/4-mile (400 m) long and with more than 2,000,000 square feet (190,000 m2) of floor space is more than 20 times the size of the original 1880 building. The City of New York owns the museum building and contributes utilities, heat, and some of the cost of guardianship, the collections are owned by a private corporation of Fellows and Benefactors. Visit the museum’s website at … http://www.metmuseum.org

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