Van Dyck and Frans Hals
Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) and Frans Hals (1582/3-1666) were both born in Antwerp, in Flanders. Both their fathers worked in the clothing industry, Van Dyck’s father as a rich silk merchant and Hals’s father as a humble cloth weaver. But Van Dyck and his parents remained in Antwerp, while Hals and his parents emigrated to Haarlem, in Holland, either to improve their economic prospects or as religious refugees. To compare the paintings of Van Dyck and Hals is also to illustrate the split between Flanders, where most patrons were aristocratic and Catholic, and Holland, where most patrons were middle-class and Protestant. Van Dyck in Flanders painted some religious and mythological pictures; but there was less demand for that kind of art in a Protestant country like Holland, where Hals worked as a specialist portrait painter. Van Dyck painted full-length portraits of his aristocratic clients, but Hals’s patrons were mostly middle-class people – brewers, cloth merchants, and professionals – who usually wanted simple three-quarters or half-length portraits.
The greater remuneration given to artists in Flanders was reflected in the lifestyles of the two painters. Van Dyck employed servants, dressed fashionably, and collected old masters. Hals lived in rented accommodation, was often in debt, and in his last few years was dependent on public charity. Van Dyck employed studio assistants, while Hals gave tuition to pupils. Van Dyck travelled and worked in Italy and England, while Hals spent nearly all his life in Haarlem, apart from a brief trip back to Antwerp in 1616.
This foreign travel had a significant effect on the styles of the two painters. In Genoa, Rome and Venice, and in England at the court of Charles I, Van Dyck encountered luxurious and cultured lifestyles which must have made his native Flanders seem somewhat provincial. Van Dyck was also able to study the paintings of Titian, the Renaissance portraitist of the Venetian nobility. Hals’s visit to Antwerp in 1616 may be responsible for a possible Flemish influence in his work, seen in his fondness for loose brushstrokes and bright colours (Liedtke 17).
Van Dyck and Hals were both innovators, because they did not just follow fashion, they helped to create it. In their different ways, Van Dyck and Hals introduced greater naturalism into portraiture. Unlike his teacher Rubens, Van Dyck was not a learned or academic painter. He did not make drawings from antique sculpture and did not usually introduce allegorical elements into his portraits. His portraits are remarkable for their flattering portrayal of his sitters, their graceful surface patterns, and their decorative colours. He was also able to portray children sympathetically. This mode of painting was an instant success in aristocratic circles, and Van Dyck swiftly became the leading portrait painter in Genoa, and later in England. The middle-class patrons of Hals do not at first appear to be the kind of people who would welcome innovation. But the fact that they knew little about art perhaps meant that they had few preconceived ideas, and were thus able to accept the innovations of Hals. As Walter Liedtke points out, Hals depicted his sitters in their social roles - as clergymen, authors, aldermen, or whatever - but also gave each sitter great vivacity and individuality (Liedtke 34). Another of Hals’s innovations was his “rough” manner of painting, with visible brushstrokes, which gives incredible vitality to his work. Credit for this must also be given to Hals’s patrons, who were ready to accept his new technique.
In Arnold Houbracken’s article on Hals - included in his history of Netherlandish painters (published 1718-21) - the author claims that Van Dyck and Hals actually met on one occasion, that they painted one another’s portraits, and that Van Dyck’s more polished style proved him to be the superior painter. This anecdote was probably invented by Houbracken. He may have copied the idea from an old story about the rivalry between Apelles and Protogenes, two artists in ancient Greece (Slive 62). But it is nevertheless interesting, because it emphasises the important seventeenth-century distinction between the “rough” and the “smooth” styles of painting. A few of Van Dyck’s early works are done in a fairly “rough” manner, but he soon went on to the more “finished” style praised by Houbracken. Hals went in the opposite direction, since his early portraits are mostly done in a conventional “finished” style, but his later ones are noted for their “rough” manner. “Rough” should not be taken to mean “unfinished”. If Hals had “finished” his portraits it would have destroyed their unique effect. To make these distinctions clearer, it is useful to compare some individual portraits by Van Dyck and Hals.
In Arnold Houbracken’s article on Hals - included in his history of Netherlandish painters (published 1718-21) - the author claims that Van Dyck and Hals actually met on one occasion, that they painted one another’s portraits, and that Van Dyck’s more polished style proved him to be the superior painter. This anecdote was probably invented by Houbracken. He may have copied the idea from an old story about the rivalry between Apelles and Protogenes, two artists in ancient Greece (Slive 62). But it is nevertheless interesting, because it emphasises the important seventeenth-century distinction between the “rough” and the “smooth” styles of painting. A few of Van Dyck’s early works are done in a fairly “rough” manner, but he soon went on to the more “finished” style praised by Houbracken. Hals went in the opposite direction, since his early portraits are mostly done in a conventional “finished” style, but his later ones are noted for their “rough” manner. “Rough” should not be taken to mean “unfinished”. If Hals had “finished” his portraits it would have destroyed their unique effect. To make these distinctions clearer, it is useful to compare some individual portraits by Van Dyck and Hals.
Anthony Van Dyck, An Elderly Man, Liechenstein Museum |
Anthony Van Dyck, Lucan van Uffel, Metropolitan Museum, New York
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Frans Hals, Isaac Massa, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
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Lucas van Uffel, who had moved to Venice, was a ship owner, an arms dealer, and an art collector (Brown 78). Isaac Massa, based in Haarlem, was a merchant and a diplomat, who had travelled to Russia and Sweden (Slive 190). The geographical interests of these gentlemen are suggested by the globe on Van Uffel’s table and the fir trees seen through the window behind Isaac Massa. Both portraits capture a moment in time. Lucas van Uffel is slowly rising from his chair to greet the viewer, and Isaac Massa is swinging round to address someone outside the picture. Van Uffel is shown from a respectful distance, he is expensively dressed, and on his table is a piece of ancient sculpture from his art collection. Hals’s portrait of Isaac Massa is much more lively and informal. Isaac Massa is shown right up against the picture plane, he is turning rapidly in his chair, his mouth is opening to speak, and there are no objects in the room to distract our attention. Hals’s brushwork is “rougher” than the “smooth” style of Van Dyck, and this deliberate blurring of the image helps to suggest a figure in motion.
Anthony Van Dyck, Virginio Cesarini, Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
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Anthony Van Dyck, The Lomellini Family, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
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Frans Hals, Family Portrait, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati
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Two fine examples of group portraits are Van Dyck’s picture of The Lomellini Family, who were aristocrats in Genoa, and Hals’s Family Portrait of some anonymous Haarlem burghers. Both pictures use the same format: a father standing, a mother seated, and two small children, arranged so that the heads of the sitters form a diagonal. The Lomellini group also includes the husband’s brother, (standing on the left, in armour), because in Italy “brothers tended to live together in the family palace” (Burke 12). The brother holds a broken staff, probably symbolising his part in the defence of Genoa against Savoy (Brown & Vlieghe 186). The Lomellinis are stiff and formal, whereas Hals’s people are more relaxed, interacting with each other. The husband is saying something to his wife, who smiles at his words, while the two children are giggling together. The family have brought out chairs to sit in the garden, and there is even a glass of beer on the table. The two pictures contrast aristocratic Italian gravitas with bourgeois Dutch domesticity.
Anthony Van Dyck, Maria Louisa de Tassis, Liechtenstein Museum |
Frans Hals, Isabella Coymans, Private Collection |
Van Dyck’s Maria Louisa de Tassis and Hals’s Isabella Coymans are masterpieces of fashionable portraiture. Unusually, Hals’s sitter had greater status than Van Dyck’s, since the Coymans family was one of the wealthiest in Holland, with a fortune derived from trade and banking (Slive 322). Antonio de Tassis, father of Maria Louisa, had a military career, helped set up a postal service, and then retired to become a canon of Antwerp cathedral (Wheelock 216). Maria Louisa looks sweetly at the viewer, but the picture is essentially a costume piece, and Van Dyck has taken tremendous care to record the details of jewellery, lace, silk, satin, and the splendid ostrich feather fan. Hals’s Isabella is far more animated. Her face is lit up by a smile, and her body is in movement, as she turns to offer a rose to her husband (in a companion portrait). A contemporary of Hals wrote that his portraits “seem to live and breathe" (Efrtemeijer 6) and we can see exactly what he meant. Hals beats Van Dyck even in the treatment of costume, since his slightly blurred forms and his use of highlights convey a feeling of animation and movement. Isabella’s charming smile, her expressive gesture, and her exposed neckline were a bit unconventional in a formal portrait, but the Coymans had such high status that they probably did not need to care what the ordinary Dutch bourgeois might think.
Anthony Van Dyck, Nicholas Lanier, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Frans Hals, The Laughing Cavalier, Wallace Collection, London
Nicholas Lanier was sent to the Continent by Charles I to purchase artworks for the royal collection. Lanier used some of this money to commission a portrait of himself, by Van Dyck, which he presented to Charles I on his return to England (Brotton 117). This piece of colossal cheek was not minded or noticed by the King, since he hung the picture in his palace at Whitehall. This portrait is the prototype image of the Caroline courtier, and may have influenced Charles to invite Van Dyck to England. The languid Lanier is propping himself against a rock. His expression hovers between haughtiness and melancholy. He was Master of the King’s Music, but music was a low status profession, and he did not want to be depicted with anything so demeaning as a musical instrument. Instead, he drapes his hand across the hilt of his sword, which marks him out as a gentleman, since the right to carry swords was severely restricted. Hals’s Laughing Cavalier (the title was given in the nineteenth century) has some resemblances to the portrait of Lanier. The Cavalier is gorgeously dressed, wears a sword, sticks out an elbow, and gazes directly at the viewer. But unlike the Lanier portrait, the Cavalier is placed against the picture plane, and the plain background also helps to push him forward. The Cavalier’s faint smile, his rakishly tilted hat, and Hals’s vigorous brushwork, all hint at a greater vitality than is to be found in Lanier.
We will not follow Van Dyck to England, since the work he did for Charles I and his courtiers has few points of comparison with the work Hals did for the burghers of Haarlem. And it could be argued that Van Dyck and Hals were always such different artists that it is not very meaningful to compare them at all. One can sometimes find superficial points of resemblance, but that is only what one would expect from two portrait painters working in the same time period and sometimes for a similar clientele. What are most noticeable are not their resemblances but their differences.
Van Dyck produced many religious and
mythological paintings, which Hals never attempted, apart from four small
pictures of the apostles. Van Dyck specialised in full-length portraits, but
Hals created only one full-length, the portrait of Willem van Heythuysen. Van Dyck in England pioneered the
double-portrait (two friends painted together), but Hals painted only one
similar picture, the marital portrait of Isaac
Massa and Beatrix van der Laen. Van Dyck painted several equestrian
portraits, notably Charles I on Horseback, but this was totally foreign to Hals. The
Dutch did not make much use of horses in war (they were a naval power), and in
daily life they usually walked or took canal boats. Van Dyck, a master of
self-promotion, made a number of self-portraits, but Hals is only known to have
made two: a small half-length and as a figure in the background of one of his
civic guard portraits. These group portraits of civic guards – and
also group portraits of the governors and governesses of charitable
institutions – were one of Hals’s specialities. They are some of his greatest
paintings, and are today to be seen at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. But
there are no similar pictures in the work of Van Dyck, because it was only in republican
Holland that such civic institutions could flourish. Another of Hals’s
specialities was the portrayal of people on the margins of society. Examples
include The Rommelpot Player, The Gypsy Girl, and Malle Babbe. Again, there
are no equivalent pictures in the work of Van Dyck, who liked to keep the lower
classes firmly out of his pictures.
After about 1650, the Dutch ruling class
began to acquire a taste for a more ostentatious lifestyle, based on French and
Flemish models. An English visitor complained that “the old, severe and frugal
way of living is now almost out of date in Holland" (Boxer 42). An unfortunate result of this was that the plainer style of Hals (and
Rembrandt) began to go out of fashion, to be replaced by the sometimes flashy
and shallow manner of Van Dyck’s imitators. One of these was the painter Govert
Flinck, who “borrowed elegant poses from Van Dyck to make his sitters look more
aristocratic” (Burke 93). Van
Dyck continued to influence painters for the next two centuries, since so many catered
to an aristocratic clientele, and it was not until the nineteenth century that
the genius of Hals was rediscovered by painters like Manet, Van Gogh and
Whistler.
Works Cited
Boxer, C. R., The Dutch Seaborne Empire 1600-1800
(London: Penguin, 1965)
Brotton, Jerry, The Sale of the Late King’s Goods: Charles I
and His Art Collection (London: Pan Books, 2007)
Burke, Peter, Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of
Seventeenth-Century Elites (London: Temple Smith, 1974)
Brown,
Christopher, Van Dyck (Oxford:
Phaidon, 1982)
Brown,
Christopher and Hans Vlieghe (editors), Van
Dyck 1599-1641 (London: Royal Academy, 1999) exhibition catalogue
Erftemeijer,
Antoon, Frans Hals: A Phenomenon
(Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum, 2014)
Freedberg,
David, Van Dyck and Virginio Cesarini
pdf file at: www.columbia.edu/cu/arthistory/faculty/Freedberg/Van-Dyck-and-Virginio- Cesarini.pdf
Liedtke, Walter,
Frans Hals: Style and Substance (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011)
Slive, Seymour
(editor), Frans Hals (Brussels:
Ludion, 1989) exhibition catalogue
Wheelock,
Arthur, and others, Anthony Van Dyck
(Washington: National Gallery Of Art, 1991) exhibition catalogue |
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