Hals

Hals, FRANS, the elder, portrait and genre painter, was born, probably at Antwerp, in 1580 or 1581, though some authorities give 1584 as the date. His parents, members of an old Haarlem family, returned to that city about 1600, and Hals studied under Karel van Mander and, according to some accounts, under Rubens. Some ten years later he married Anneke Hermanszoon, and in 1615 he was summoned before the magistrates and reprimanded for ill-treating his wife and for his drunken and disorderly life. A few weeks later his wife died, and in 1617 he married a woman of doubtful character, Lysbeth Reynier. In his later years, in spite of his unceasing industry, to which the numerous works from his hand in the continental galleries bear witness, he fell into poverty, and was relieved by the municipality of Haarlem, who in 1664 bestowed on him a pension of 200 florins. He died at Haarlem in 1666, and on the 1st of September was buried in the church of St Bavon. Hals is usually regarded as the founder of the Dutch school of genre-painting. His subjects of feasting and carousal are treated with marvellous vivacity and spirit, and as a portrayer of faces convulsed with laughter he is without a rival. His portraits are full of character, and catch with admirable subtlety the lightest shades of passing expression. Technically his work is masterly, his handling being most direct and powerful; but a certain hardness and crudeness of tone is frequently apparent in his rendering of flesh, and his later works have little variety of colouring, and show an unpleasant blackness in the shadows. Of his portrait groups eight noble examples are preserved in the museum of Haarlem, the finest being that dated 1633, representing the officers of the corps of St Adrian. The 'Mandoline Player' (1630), in the gallery of Amsterdam, is a typical example of his treatment of single figures. A series of excellent etchings after the works of Hals, by Professor William Unger, with text by C. Vosmaer, was published in Leyden in 1873. As a teacher he exercised a marked influence upon the development of Dutch art, Jan Verspronck, Van der Helst, Adrian van Ostade, Adrian Brouwer, and Wouerman having been his pupils. An interesting view of the interior of his studio, dated 1652, by Job Berch-Heyde, another of his scholars, is in the Haarlem Museum.—His brother, DIRK HALS, a pupil of Abraham Bloemaert, was also an excellent genre-painter (b. before 1600, d. 1656); and several of Frans's sons were artists, the most celebrated being Frans Hals, the younger, who flourished from about 1637 to 1669.