Frans Hals at the Rijksmuseum in 2024
Ticket sales start on 15 August 2023
Publication date: 27 July 2023 - 12:30
The Rijksmuseum presents Frans Hals, an exhibition of some 50 of the Dutch master painter’s greatest works, many on loan from top international collections. The exhibition runs from 16 February to 9 June 2024.
Frans Hals is being organised by the Rijksmuseum in partnership with the National Gallery, London, and Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and through a special collaboration with the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.
Frans Hals is regarded as one of the most innovative artists of the 17th century, for his brisk, impressionistic painting style. With unparalleled boldness and talent, he captured the vitality of his subjects – from stately regents to cheerful musicians and children – and made them live and breathe on the canvas.
The exhibition will take place in the Phillips Wing of the Rijksmuseum. All visitors are required to reserve a start time. Online ticket sales start at 11:00 on 15 August 2023 at www.rijksmuseum.nl
First major exhibition in over 30 years
Following monographic exhibitions devoted to Rembrandt (in 2015 and 2019) and Vermeer (in 2023), the Rijksmuseum is now staging its first major exhibition devoted to Frans Hals. This is the first exhibition of his work on such a scale since the 1989-1990 show which visited The Royal Academy of Arts, London, the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, and The National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Peerless dynamism
The 50 works in this exhibition testify to the aim of Frans Hals (Antwerp 1582/1584 – Haarlem 1666) to convincingly portray his subjects as living, breathing, kinetic individuals. To this end, Hals deliberately and boldly pursued a unique personal style that was utterly original in the context of 17th-century Dutch painting. He used his quick and lively brushwork style to imbue his subjects with an unprecedented level of dynamism. The exhibition will also dig deeper into the identities and social milieus of the people Hals painted, bringing them even more to life. Malle Babbe, for example, is believed to have been a familiar figure on the streets of Hals’s home city of Haarlem, while the man portrayed in Peeckelhaering was probably an English actor touring the Netherlands with a theatre group.
Virtuoso
Frans Hals’s original style and technique earned him a reputation in his own time as a virtuoso, a status equalled only by the likes of Rembrandt in the Netherlands and Velázquez in Spain. He was an in-demand portraitist among the wealthy citizenry of Haarlem and other cities in the region. Over the course of the 18th century, however, Hals’s work gradually fell into obscurity. It wasn’t until the 19th century that French art critic and journalist Théophile Thoré-Bürger (1807–1869) rediscovered his work, as well as that of Vermeer. Until the 1960s, Frans Hals was regarded as one of the ‘big three’ of 17th-century Dutch painting, alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer. Later, however, interest in the artist waned significantly – reason enough for the Rijksmuseum, The National Gallery, London, and Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, to place him on the highest possible pedestal and to show how truly boundary-breaking he was as an artist.
Forerunner of Impressionism
The artist’s expressive, gestural brushwork has always been seen as the most distinctive quality of his art, and he can justifiably be described as the forerunner of Impressionism. Hals’s virtuosic style influenced fellow artists Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, James McNeil Whistler, Claude Monet, Max Liebermann, Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and others. Almost all of them visited Haarlem to admire his portraits of individuals and civil militia groups.
Loaned paintings
Frans Hals presents selected key paintings spanning the artist’s entire oeuvre, which currently comprises some 200 works in all. Exhibits include The Laughing Cavalier (1624, Wallace Collection, London), which is being lent for the first time since 1870; Portrait of Catharina Hooft with her Nurse (c. 1619/20) and Malle Babbe (c. 1640, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin); Family Group in a Landscape (c. 1646, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bomemisza, Madrid); Fruit and Vegetable Seller (1630, private collection); The Lute Player (c. 1623, Musée du Louvre, Paris); and various portraits of civil militia and regent groups from the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.
Book about Frans Hals
Authors: Bart Cornelis, Friso Lammertse, Justine Rinnooy Kan, Jaap van der Veen
Available in Dutch and English versions, 224 pages
Dutch version: ISBN 978 94 9266 043 5 (softcover)
English version: ISBN 978 94 9266 044 2 (softcover)
Price: €35
Exhibition design
Architect and designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte is the exhibition designer for Frans Hals at the Rijksmuseum. Graphic design by Irma Boom.
Donors
Frans Hals is made possible in part by Ammodo, Rijksmuseum International Circle and Rijksmuseum Patrons
Frans Hals exhibitions
The National Gallery, London, from 30 September 2023 to 21 January 2024
The Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, from 16 February 2024 to 9 June 2024
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,, from 12 July 2024 to 3 November 2024
Image: The Lute Player (c. 1623 Musée du Louvre, Paris)
Downloads
Frans Hals, A Militiaman Holding a Berkemeyer, Known as the ‘Merry Drinker’ (c. 1629). Photo: Rijksmuseum/ Kelly Schenk.