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Men with hats, men without hats, men in ruffs, men holding skulls, men wearing what look like paper doilies, men with big collars, sad men, happy men. affluent men, successful men, aldermen, and a man who is neither a cavalier nor laughing but is nonetheless known to everyone as The Laughing Cavalier.
The Laughing Cavalier (1624)
It's not so much that every portrait in the Wallace Collection's Frans Hals:The Male Portrait is of a man, the title makes that very clear, it's more that these men, these mostly self-important and pompous looking men, are of little or no interest to anybody anymore.
"Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair" wrote Percy Shelley in 1818's Ozymandias. Shelley intended to both lampoon and puncture the hubris of the lives of 'great men' and though he succeeded in this it didn't change much. We live in a time when, during the worst global pandemic for over a century, the Prime Minister can, apparently, devote much of his time to scouring maps to see where he can build monuments to himself.
I've no idea if the people depicted in the work of Frans Hals were as awful as Boris Johnson. Statistically, it's highly unlikely - as few people are. But I do know that not one of their names means much to anybody know. The Netherlands in the 17th century was, I'm sure, a vibrant time of commerce and art but it's not one that troubles our minds much anymore.
So, instead of worrying about the sitters. The best way to look at Hals' portraiture is to look at the paintings themselves. During the Dutch Golden Age, Hals was admired for his his skill in making portraits that seemed "to live and breathe" and for capturing the personality as well as the looks of his various subjects. In the "cosmopolitan and vibrant" city of Haarlem he had plenty of flamboyant dandies and moneyed elders who were more than happy to be painted by him.
Portrait of a Man Holding a Skull (c.1610-14)
When Hals died, in his eighties, in 1666 his work, and name, fell into obscurity and some even claimed his modern, for the time, artistic style came as a result of his dissolute lifestyle. It wasn't until the second half of the nineteenth century when the 4th Marquess of Hertford purchased The Laughing Cavalier that his reputation was restored and, in France, the Impressionists took notice.
Not that you can necessarily see that in all of the works displayed at the Wallace Collection. The memento mori of Portrait of Man Holding a Skull is too sombre. Partly because during that era strict Spanish fashions were prevalent in Dutch society and everyone seems to have dressed, bar a frill or a ruff here and there, as if in a gloomy Zurbaran painting.
But partly, also, because this earlyish Hals work shows an artist still learning his craft. Hals soon removed skulls and such like from his painting. Either he, or I imagine his wealthy patrons, wanted their lives celebrated. Not to be forever reminded that death is both imminent and inevitable.
Jan van de Velde II after Jan Saenredam - View of Haarlem from the South (1628)
Portrait of a Man (c.1635)
Another portrait, from nearly two decades later, demonstrates how Hals learned to relax into his style. When making it, Hals didn't allow one colour of paint to dry before applying the next - which gives it a more informal feel that seems suitable for this particular sitter who looks quite at ease. Perhaps he'd just a glass or two of jenever.
Apparently it was initially paired with a portrait of the sitter's wife and she was depicted in a far more formal pose. Hals' women, we learn, were not painted with the same honesty as Hals' men. Make of that what you will.
Look at the dude below. With his dinky arm akimbo and his long flowing locks. Considering the picture is almost entirely monochrome, Hals' backgrounds regularly feature a kind of shit brown colour familiar to observers of the set of Michael Parkinson's chat shows of the 1970s, but the image has, despite that, a lot of 'colour' about it.
Portrait of a Man (early 1650s)
Willem Coymans (1645)
As Van Gogh said, "Frans Hals must have had 27 blacks". Hals' other trick, and quite a neat one, was to combine refinement with nonchalance. Men like Willem Coymans, a member of one of Holland's most influential merchant families, were modern men. They were not stymied nor held back by social convention. If they want to don a big hat, a collar that could take your eye out, and lean into their portrait then they'll damned well do it - and Hals will enable that.
It's the below portrait of an unnamed man that, for me, is the work that seems to have most influenced Impressionist painters like Manet. Hals was an octogenarian when he made the painting so perhaps the looseness of it is down to him getting a bit fragile or a bit shaky. But I like to feel it was because he was more confident, and forward thinking, in his approach.
Portrait of a Man (c.1660-63)
Portrait of Francois Wouters (1645)
By that age, he didn't have a lot to lose. It's a pity, for me, that the Wallace Collection didn't have more like that. Maybe Hals didn't make many like that. For me, it was the highlight of the show and more rigid representations like that of Francois Wouters, above, pale in comparison.
Wouters was quite the man about town. An alderman, a burgomaster, a city councillor, and a brewer so Hals' painting of him is of course respecful. Wouters dons sober attire though, ever keen to make the case for Hals as a precursor to modernity, the curators of the exhibition direct us to Wouters' exposed wrist, just visible above his glove. Phwoar!
Portrait of a Man (1630)
Pieter van den Broecke (c.1633)
Hals' gallery of swells continue and after a fashion you long for something else. I'd mistakenly imagined there to be second, maybe third and fourth, room in the exhibition but there was just this one. Portraits on all walls like some hall of mirrors, eyes following you round the room as if in a haunted mansion, and, in the background, the hustle and bustle of people chatting over coffee and cake.
Which I am sure more people come to the Wallace Collection for than the art. So who have we got? Well, there's Pieter van den Broecke, a ruddy cheeked admiral and slave trader of the Dutch East India Company, there's Hals' friend Isaac Abrahamsz Massa - a prosperous merchant who had spent much time in Russia, and there's a man who may or may not be the Haarlem brewer and art collector Nicolaes Pietersz Duyst van Voorhout.
Plus, of course, that Laughing Cavalier. We don't know who he is and, for some reason, he was given that name as late as 1888 but he is, by some margin, Hals' most famous sitter. The paintings of these men, Cavalier included, are good. Hals was obviously skilled. But the show itself was too dry for my liking. There were times when I could see that Hals was, clearly, an influence on more dynamic later artists but there were many others where I had him down as a starchy pencil squeezer who made society portraits of men desperate not to be forgotten by history. In comparison to the man who painted them, though, that is exactly what did happen to them.
Isaac Abrahamz Massa (1626)
Portrait of a Man, possibly Nicolaes Pietersz Duyst van Voorhout (c.1636-8)
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