Frans Hals

Frans Hals
Copy of a self-portrait by Frans Hals.
Born	Frans Hals c. 1582 Antwerp, Flanders, Spanish Netherlands (now Kingdom of Belgium)
Died	26 August 1666 (aged 83–84) Haarlem, Dutch Republic
Nationality	Dutch
Notable work	Gipsy Girl, 1628-30 Laughing Cavalier

External video

Hals' Singing Boy with Flute, Smarthistory

Hals's Malle Babbe, Smarthistory

Frans Hals the Elder (/hɑːls/;Dutch: [ɦɑls]; c. 1582 – 26 August 1666) was a Dutch Golden Age portrait painter who lived and worked in Haarlem. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and he helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group portraiture.

Hals was born in 1582 or 1583 in Antwerp as the son of cloth merchant Franchois Fransz Hals van Mechelen (c.1542–1610) and his second wife Adriaentje van Geertenryck. Like many, Hals' parents 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 Flemish émigré Karel van Mander, whose Mannerist influence, however, is barely noticeable in Hals' work.

In 1610, Hals became a member of 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 Schilderboeck ("Painter's Book") published in Haarlem in 1604. The most notable of these were the works of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Jan van Scorel, and Jan Mostaert that hung in the St. Janskerk in Haarlem. The restoration work was paid for by the city of Haarlem, since all Catholic religious art had been confiscated after the satisfactie van Haarlem had been reversed in 1578, which had formerly given Catholics equal rights to Protestants. However, 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 condition that he remove it from the city. It was in this cultural context that Hals began his career in portraiture, since the market had disappeared for religious themes.