Page:Hofstede de Groot catalogue raisonné, Volume 3, 1910.djvu/24

 4 FRANS HALS SECT, vivacious little faces in ever-new ways on his panels. Some of these child- studies, like the two circular panels of Schwerin (n, 32), are among the best of their kind. On the whole, one of the master's great merits con- sists in his humour ; no other painter has succeeded as he did in repre- senting laughter in its various degrees. The breadth of his brushwork was of great service to him in this. It explains also why his portraits of men are as a rule more attractive and enthralling than his portraits of women, and why, too, among the women's portraits, the old women pro- duce a deeper impression on the spectator than the younger women. Although Frans Hals is rightly acclaimed as the second greatest master of the Dutch school, he is very far from equalling Rembrandt. He was no innovator, like Rembrandt, in the arrangement of lighting and the rendering of colour. In versatility of expression he stands far behind Rembrandt ; etching-needle and sketching-chalk have left us nothing by Hals. Moreover, his range of subject was far more restricted ; he did not paint landscape, and he did not treat biblical or historical subjects. Finally, his portrait-groups are in their arrangement considerably weaker than those of Rembrandt. In many cases he did not succeed in rounding off his compositions satisfactorily ; indeed, it might almost be said that he never tried to do so. As a source of inspiration, on the contrary, Hals' work was scarcely less fruitful than that of Rembrandt. The whole Haarlem school of the seventeenth century was subject to his powerful influence. PUPILS AND IMITATORS OF FRANS HALS HENDRIK GERRITSZ POT (about 1585-1657) is said to have been a fellow-pupil of Frans Hals under Van Mander. In the last decade he has become generally recognized as one of the very capable genre-painters who were closely related to their prototype Dirck Hals. In several pictures with life-sized figures, in the Haarlem and Rotterdam Museums, he appears to have been strongly influenced by his abler fellow-pupil. As he signed his pictures comparatively seldom, and then only with his monogram " HP," many of them may be passing as anonymous works of the school of Hals. He is conjectured to have painted the group of the Beresteyn family in the Louvre, and his name has been mentioned in connection with the portrait of Emerentia van Beresteyn (No. 153) in the collection of the Baroness Mathilde von Rothschild at Frankfort. Recently, too, a prominent place has been assigned to JUDITH LEYSTER (about 1600-5-1666), who became in 1633 the wife of Jan Miense Molenaer. She was praised by the contemporary historian of Haarlem, Samuel Ampzing, as being the veritable guiding star in art that her name implied (Ley-ster being equated to Leid-star, or guiding star). Yet her works seemed to have been lost, and her monogram J + L with a little star passed unnoticed. There is no documentary evidence to show that she was a pupil of Frans Hals. Yet the fact is placed beyond doubt by her works,