Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 3, 1910.djvu/23

 ix FRANS HALS 3 itself remarkable ; still more extraordinary is the fact that these groups extend over nearly half a century, from 1616 to 1664. ^ n a ll Holland there was no other man who could retain his popularity for so long a period. It is very difficult to translate the art of Frans Hals into words. It is easier to define his range of subject, which is limited to single portraits, portrait-groups, and life-sized genre-pieces. It is commonly supposed that Hals at first painted more timidly and with less breadth than in his later years. This would be natural and is quite possible, but it cannot be demonstrated as a general rule, because, as already stated, we possess no work by him which is certainly earlier than 1616, when Hals was thirty- six years of age. Let us recall the fact that Rembrandt was of that age when he painted the so-called " Night Watch," and then suppose for a moment that we knew nothing of the 250 pictures, in round numbers, which he had produced up to that time. How should we be able, in such a case, to form any opinion as to the course of Rembrandt's development ? The first known work of Frans Hals, the " Banquet of the Officers of St. George's Shooting Company of Haarlem" (1616), is a masterpiece, surpassing everything of the kind that had been done in Holland before. It is not the first attempt of a youth ; it is the achievement of a man, who could say, with Correggio, "Anch io sono pittore" ("I too am a painter "). The master throughout his whole life was peculiarly distinguished for his broad, flowing style of painting, and for his skill in the immediate juxtaposition of various colours, which as A. van Dyck had, Houbraken tells us, already observed he accomplished with a stroke of his brush, always in the right place. The feature of his style which altered in the course of years was his colouring. Such richly-coloured compositions as his early "Shooting Companies," his "Merry Company at Table" (141), and many single portraits were no longer produced in the later period, from about 1640 onwards. One reason for this was that the fashion changed ; black became the prevailing colour for the dress both of men and of women. But the master's taste changed too. Pictures like the Haarlem "St. George's Shooting Company" of 1639, and the Amsterdam "Company of Captain Reynier Reael" of 1637, which might be as rich in colour as the earlier works, are not so. They reveal an endeavour to paint tone, which results in a delicate effect of silver-grey. Soon after this one observes the unmistakable though transient influence of Rembrandt's well-defined flood of light, as in " The Governors of the St. Elizabeth Hospital at Haarlem" (1641). In the last period of the master's career, which follows, a blackish half-tone prevails in the portraits. Hals had in the meantime restricted himself exclusively to portrait-painting ; for all his genre figure-pieces that we know were painted between 1620 and 1640. At this earlier period he seems to have felt the need of occasional change from the serious work of -portrait-painting, and found relaxation in rendering the popular types which he saw in the streets of Haarlem the fisher-boys and girls, the " rommelpot " players, the old women, and the itinerant musicians. Above all, his own children were then his favourite models. He was never tired of rendering their attractive, healthy, and