About Frans Hals and Van Campen Family Portrait in a Landscape

Frans Hals (1582/831666), one of the three giants of 17th-century Dutch painting along with
Rembrandt and Vermeer, was also one of the greatest portraitists of all time. Renowned for his
dashing single figures of the Dutch middle class, often paired with a rendering of the sitters
spouse, Hals also painted a number of group portraits, most famously of Haarlem civic guard
companies. On at least four occasions he took up the challenge of family portraiture. The
Museums example, the earliest, originally depicted a fashionably dressed couple with their nine
children, all interacting affectionately through glance and gesture. Just a year or two after the
paintings completion, a 10th child was born. The figure of this infant girl, seated in the lower
left of the composition, was added in 1628 by a different painter from Haarlem, Salomon de
Bray (15971664), in a style noticeably different from that of Hals. Why Hals was not the one
hired to paint the portrait of this most recent addition to the family remains a mystery. At some
point before the end of the 18th century the canvas was cut vertically at the right. This segment
showing three children with a goat cart exists today in the museum in Brussels (see illustration).
The identity of the family in Halss painting has only quite recently been ascertained through
archival research by a Hals scholar. The parents are cloth merchant Gijsbert Claesz. van
Campen and Maria Jorisdr., who were married in 1604. One very plausible supposition is that
the painting was commissioned by them on the occasion of their 20th wedding anniversary.
The genius of Hals is best encountered in his mastery of compositional structure, in his ability to
capture a natural sense of vitality, and especially in his seemingly spontaneous, bravura
brushwork (look, for example, at the glove held by the father or the crimson sleeve of the eldest
daughter). As a contemporary of the artist wrote , Hals was a marvel at painting portraits which
appear very rough and bold, nimbly touched and well composed, pleasing and ingenious, and
when seen from a distance seem to lack nothing but life itself.