My Favorite Paintings at Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Netherlands

The Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem naturally had quite a few paintings by this Dutch master.  However, his paintings collected there were of sombre kind, unlike those more typical earthy figures of his such as The Laughing Cavalier in the Wallace Collection in London.  His paintings here were often group portraits of gloom looking men, sitting in rigid rows, in great contrast to Rembrandt's ground-breaking group painting, The Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq, aka The Night Watch.  I yearned for something different and the painting below emerged as my favorite.


The Regentesses of the Old Men's Home in Haarlem, 1664
canvas, 170.5 x 249.5 cm
Frans Hals (Antwerpen ca 1582 - Haarlem 1666)

First, these people were women, though severe and somber, their delicate broad white lace collars softened their images and the sloping lines of their heads and hands giving us a sense of a close community and strong bond of sisterhood.  These were not ordinary women, rather, they were four four regentesses with the housemother standing behind.  They were somewhat severe and wise in their business like directness, and not without kindness, in their modesty and motherly nodding way.  The arrowhead shaped composition added a sense of movement and power to these serious though not without some motherly benevolence women.

According to Haarlem Museum, "the four regentesses of trustees of the Old Men's Alms House in 1664 were Adriaentje Schouten, Marijtje Willems, Anna van Damme and Adriana Bredenhoff. They are portrayed, with the housemother, in this group portrait by Frans Hals. The painting in the background may be of the Good Samaritan, a subject that illustrates the charity of the regentesses. The portraits of the regentesses and the regents have been both admired and reviled over the centuries - admired for the manner of their painting, which had a particularly marked impact on the Impressionists and Realists of the 19th century, and reviled because people thought that the portraits of the regentesses were not very flattering. For a long time it was believed that Frans Hals had lived in the Old Men's Alms House. It was said that this portrait of the regentesses and that of the regents were his way of taking his revenge on the strict trustees. But Frans Hals never lived in the Old Men's Alms House. We do, however, know that in the 1630s Frans Hals and his large family lived in Groot Heiligland, the street where the Old Men' s Alms House stood."

I did not feel this group portrait unflattering at all.  Rather, it elevated the status of women.  Applaud the painter and the regentesses as well.

My second choice from Frans Hals Museum contrasted markedly from the one above - a portrait of Mercury by Hendrick Goltzius (Mühlbracht 1558 - Haarlem 1617).


Mercury, 1611, canvas, 214 x 120 cm 
Hendrick Goltzius (Mühlbracht 1558 - Haarlem 1617) 

First, the subject of this painting was one of my favorite gods - Mercury, youthful, lithe, swift and elegant.  Second, he was the patron of the arts and god of rhetoric - the fields I valued highly.  The only reservation I had about this version of Mercury lay in the fact that he was more a man than a youth, even more so than Michelangelo's David, massive, yet not ungraceful.

The museum's website described the god as "recognizable by his winged helmet, the snake-entwined caduceus and a cockerel. In this version, his caduceus looks very much like a maulstick. At Mercury's feet He drawing attributes, a set square, compasses, a drawing and an album of drawing patterns. Behind him stands a girl sticking her tongue out and holding a rattle and a magpie. In this painting. too, wisdom and stupidity are united: the girl symbolizes foolish prattle."

What I liked most of the painting was the forward leaning pose of the god and his purposeful and determined look, and the wonderful rendering of his marvelous masculine body, if I could momentarily disassociate this powerful figure from the Mercury of my own concept.  I also found the cockerel at his feet very intriguing and its symbolism though escaped me.  Perhaps a reference to the dominating and warrior like nature of Greek gods?  Perhaps a reflection of Mercury, in its equally forward leaning pose?


My Favorite Museum Collection Series

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List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited

My Favorite Paintings at the Wallace Collection, London

The Wallace Collection in London was a marvelous museum boasting many superb old master and impressive French 18th century paintings, plus decorative art and a world class armory.  Comparing to the British Museum or the National Gallery, both huge institutions in London, it was much smaller but the reward was just as great.

There were so many paintings to like there and I name these two as my favorites there: 1) The Laughing Cavalier by the Dutch painter Frans Hals (1582-1666) and 2) Voulez-vous triompher des Belles? by French artist Antoine Watteau (probably 1684 - 1721).


The Laughing Cavalier, Frans Hals, The Netherlands, 1624, Oil on canvas, Image size 83 x 67.3 cm,  Object size: 112.5 x 98 x 9 cm

This flamboyant portrait by Hals was remarkable for its candid depiction of a not wholly flattering character and the amazing ways the painter depicted the endless varieties of fabrics and laces this cavalier carried in his bulk.  It was in-your-face direct and you could not avoid his presence.  You could hear his roaring laughter, you could smell the tobacco in his finery, and the smell of beer in his breath.  You could not avoid a minor confrontation from him, if after his assessing of you as a worthy adversary or someone he could trample upon without repercussion.  His humorous mustache could not disguise his hot temper and his readiness to pounce.  A cavalier through and through.  A roguish and less-than-refined kind.

For refinement, one only need to move on to the paintings by the French Antoine Watteau, who ushered in the ornate, the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical Rococo style of paintings.  He was also credited with inventing the genre of fêtes galantes: scenes of bucolic and idyllic charm, suffused with an air of theatricality.

His characters, always refined, always occupied an Arcadian landscape, otherworldly, elegant, including those actors and actresses in the costumes of Commedia dell'arte, whom, could be crude and crass if painted by other less quintessential French painter.  Watteau's world was often misty and mythical.  His characters, however real and naturalistically rendered, always occupied a world beyond our reach, and in our longing to join them, his works cast the spell over us and made us melancholic.  Thus, Watteau's works made great complement and contrast to those by Hals. 


Voulez-vous triompher des Belles?, Antoine Watteau, France, c. 1714-1717, Oil on oak panel, Image size 35.9 x 27 x 1.4 cm,  Object size: 35.9 x 25.9 x 0.4 cm, preserved parts of the original panel



My Favorite Museum Collection Series

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List of My Favorite Artworks in the Museums I've Visited