Frans Hals Museum Haarlem

Friday 2022/09/30

One of the great masters of the Golden Age was Frans Hals. His portraits and representations of the Civic Guard are world famous. Compared to his contemporaries, his style is rather loose. His paintings almost come to life due to the broad brushstrokes and are - at least partially - quite modern. Frans Hals' works can be found at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. We visited all three and admired the magnificent works of Frans Hals there.

The photos in this blog post show pictures from our visit to the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, where, among other works, six of his world-famous Civic Guard paintings can be admired in one room.

Hals was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1583, but moved to Holland at the age of three. He became a student of Carel van Mander in 1603. In 1610, he married Anneke Harmensdochter and joined the painters' guild in Haarlem. He painted his first famous "Schutterstukken" in 1616 and his last in 1639. Until his death at the respectable age of 84, he taught painting to several students and passed on his skills to five of his fourteen children. Hals was buried in Haarlem, where he had spent almost his entire life.

Manet, Monet, and Courbet came to Haarlem to admire Hals' paintings. Vincent van Gogh was also impressed by Frans Hals' works. He wrote to his brother Theo: "What a pleasure it is to see a Frans Hals. The paintings look completely different from the numerous paintings in which everything is portrayed so evenly and smoothly."

To illustrate this, there are a few close-up shots of hands and cuffs at the end of the photo series, almost impressionistic - and that in the mid-17th century!