Frans Hals: 27 shades of black and a wonderful smile | culture

The Netherlands’ national art and history museum, the Rijksmuseum, has rolled out a carpet and some blue walls to welcome Frans Hals (1582-1666). The 17th-century Dutch Baroque painter of 27 Shades of Black and Smiles is the subject of an ambitious exhibition portraying the society of the time. There are serious and powerful men, with names and surnames, captured with jeweler’s precision. And there are anonymous people whose gestures seem to direct every brushstroke in a deft and realistic style that excited the Impressionists. After the success of last year’s retrospective dedicated to Vermeer, the museum welcomes for the first time Hals, an avant-garde of European art of the time.

The artist’s 27 shades of black on black on black were seen by Vincent van Gogh. Based on the passion with which he approached his craft, it is possible that he even counted them one by one. “It is significant, because color is not what stands out most in the works dedicated to Halsi by art historians. But colleagues like Van Gogh, Monet and Manet were fascinated by it,” says Friso Lammertse, curator of 17th-century paintings at the Rijksmuseum. “Everyone wore black in rich society and the elaborate dresses in his paintings are full of nuance,” he adds.

Brown also competes with gold in oil paintings such as Portrait of Catharina Hooft with her nanny (1619). She was a three-year-old girl who was married at the age of sixteen to Cornelis de Graeff, statesman, diplomat and one of the most influential mayors of the Dutch capital. The gold of the little girl’s dress seems to dominate the scene until the viewer notices her and the nurse’s smile. “It seems as if Hals was able to anticipate the changing expression of his models, and also the movement, and this had not happened before,” says Lammertse.

Planted opposite Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen (1625), the expert explains the reason for the difference in the attitude of the ladies and gentlemen who visit the exhibition. Van Heythuysen was a yarn merchant who poses like an aristocrat: full length, with one leg in front and a sword. “Men could do anything and wanted to see the time stamp reflected on the canvas. They had no restrictions and were inside,” says the conservative. Among the parade of elegant ladies with joined or separated hands, but always modest, are Retrato de Cunera van Baersdorp (1625). She was the daughter of the mayor of the Dutch city of Leiden, and is believed to be the only woman in Hals’ work who poses with one arm resting on her waist. It seems small, but it is almost a statement of principles.

Yes, there is an element that somewhat changes the calm imposed on the bourgeoisie and aristocrats by social norms. It’s the hat everyone wears. The artist does not always date his paintings, and the evolution of the fashion for this ornament has been very helpful in determining the year in which they were executed. “They changed like other clothes now, over and over again. And we’ve been able to date oil paintings over a period of five years thanks to the evolution of women’s headdresses.” Among the 48 fabrics collected for the exhibition are large and small white hats, all filled with lace. Only one is decorated with a pink border and appears in a Couple portrait (1622), from the couple Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen. She puts her hand on his shoulder and they both look happy.

Frans Hals was born in Antwerp when the city was part of the Kingdom of Spain. His family emigrated to the north, in what is now the Netherlands, and settled in Haarlem, where today there is a museum dedicated exclusively to his work. He married twice, had at least 14 children and lived to be 84 years old. He began his career with traditional group portraits of citizen militias – similar to Night time, by Rembrandt – and his mastery of the portrait was immediately apparent. There are three examples of this type in the exhibition and the face of each of the officers is worked as a free piece. “They were very popular subjects in Dutch art and Hals was the first to achieve a naturalistic effect on painted subjects. But he also caught street people and often had to walk around Haarlem looking for models,” says Lammertse. And here the smiles appear.

The spontaneity of the brush is equal to the laughter of children outside. Occur in young fisherman (1638) y Young fisherman laughing (1630); the second, a safe candidate for orthodontics in the 21st century. Hals paints his erratic smile in an endearing and empathetic way, and the same goes for the happy face of Smiling boy (1630). The exhibition highlights Happy drunk (1629), and it is he who receives the visitor, with flushed cheeks, with his right hand in greeting and a glass of white wine in the other. Although the yellow of the jacket dominates, the black hat draws attention. “Even this painting and the one of anonymous children and women were part of the genre. They couldn’t buy the models, but the rich liked them a lot”, says the same expert.

Two other examples of these works hang in one of the rooms: Miss Babbe (1640) y La bohemia (1632). The first is an elderly woman who may have been an alcoholic or suffering from mental illness. Hence her nickname: Crazy Barbara (Babbe) (Malle). In reality, her name was Barbara Claes and she was considered unbalanced given her problems. Her grimace contrasts with the expression of the other painting, of a girl in her prime. She has her hair down and is wearing a cropped top, and the attention is focused on her bust, which she shows off with devilish naturalness.

Hals had a studio and five of his children also painted. The father’s work is about 200 paintings, although there is no consensus on the exact number. There are also differences in the quality of some paintings, and this presents an attribution problem in some cases, because he barely signed. The exhibition has traveled from London, where it debuted in 2023, and Taco Dibbits, director of the Rijksmuseum, makes this distinction between the three great Dutch masters: “Rembrandt is the emotion of the human condition. Vermeer, stillness. Frans Hals, movement and you end up smiling at the freedom of his brush.” Open until June 9 in Amsterdam, the exhibition will then travel to Germany’s Gemäldegalerie in Berlin.

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