Family Group in a Landscape
Family Group in a Landscape | |
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Family Group in a Landscape | |
Artist | Frans Hals |
Year | c. 1645-1648 |
Catalogue | Seymour Slive, Catalog 1974: #177 |
Medium | Oil on canvas |
Dimensions | 202 cm × 285 cm (80 in × 112 in) |
Location | Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid |
Accession | 179 (1934.8) |
Family Group in a Landscape is an oil-on-canvas painting by the Dutch Golden Age painter Frans Hals, painted c. 1645-1648, and now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, in Madrid.
Painting
The painting is one of a handful of paintings that Hals made of families in the "picnic style" of open air settings, but this is the only one featuring a black boy–something of a rarity in Haarlem during Hals' lifetime. It is also one of the largest paintings by Frans Hals, and the largest painted by him that is not devoted to the civic guards of Haarlem that Hals painted many different times throughout his career.
In 2023, Ineke Mok and Dineke Stam argued that the family portrayed is that of Jacob Ruychaver (ca. 1620-1656) and his wife Maria Hendrixs. Their daughter Geertruid (1633-1710) and son Willem (1634-1673) fit the age of the children displayed on the painting. It was common for former directors-general of the Gold Coast to commission a painting with an African servant (compare Ruychaver's successor Jan Valckenburgh).[1]
Name
In his 1910 catalog of Frans Hals works Hofstede de Groot wrote:
441. A FAMILY GROUP OF FIVE PERSONS IN THE OPEN AIR, M. 89. — To the left sits a man, holding in his right hand the right hand of his wife, who is seated beside him to the right. He looks at her and she at him. The man has a slight moustache and imperial, and wears a tall black hat, a black velvet costume with a lace collar and wristhands, and high riding- boots lined on the inside. The woman wears a greenish-grey dress with a black bodice and over-skirt trimmed with yellow bows, and a white cap, collar, and wristbands all trimmed with lace. Her left hand rests on her left knee. To the left, beside the man, stands a youth, holding a stick in his right hand and resting the left at his side. He looks with a smile at the spectator. He wears a black hat, a black velvet jacket with a collar and wristbands, short breeches, and shoes. To the right, beside the woman but farther back, stands a little boy; he wears a dark-brown costume with a white collar, and looks at the spectator. Farther right again, in the same plane as the man and woman, stands their daughter, looking towards the left foreground. Her right arm hangs down at her side; in her left hand she holds a closed fan. She wears a dark dress, a white headdress with red ornaments, a thin white collar, and wristbands. Beside her to the right crouches a poodle. In the background to the left are trees, while in the right distance is a town. It is all painted in neutral grey tones, relieved only by the red of the riding-boots. Painted about 1640. Canvas, 79 inches by 112 inches. Exhibited at the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition, London, 1906, No. 102.
- In the possession of the Warde family since about 1750.
- In the collection of Colonel Warde, Squerries Court, Westerham, Kent; sold to a Continental collection, October 1909 (for, it is said, £55,000).[2]
This painting came into the hands of the art dealer Joseph Duveen in 1909.[3] It was purchased in 1910 by outbidding J.P. Morgan for $500,000 by Otto Hermann Kahn who subsequently lent it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[4] In 1935 it was in the Mogmar Art Foundation in New York, from whom the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection purchased it.[3]
Little is known of the provenance of the painting in the 18th century. It was put on show at the Royal Academy in 1906 as Portraits of The Painter and his Family.[5] Her colored underskirt and the flat collars instead of the more common millstone style show them to be wealthy burghers who could afford the latest fashion. Like the London family portrait by Hals, the background has been proposed as being painted by Pieter de Molijn; first by Neil MacLaren (in regards to the London family portrait), which was then applied to the Madrid canvas by Seymour Slive.[6][7] The painting was restored in 1966 and the documentation of the process is kept by the Getty Center.[7]
Modern inspiration
In April 2017 the painting became the subject of a TED talk by Titus Kaphar, who chose to copy the painting in order to act out a bold statement about how Black people are portrayed in cultural heritage objects, including centuries-old European artworks such as this one.[8] He paints out all figures but the Black boy in the course of his talk, his main point being that more is known about the lace collars in such paintings than about the black figures that appear in the backgrounds of them from time to time. In this specific case, the portrayed owners are equally unknown, but Kaphar has a valid point. The number of Black people in 17th-century Haarlem is virtually unknown but is assumed to be close to zero, considering the difficulties artists had portraying them, according to a popular lecture in 1770 about Facial Angles by Petrus Camper. In that lecture he claimed that another Haarlemmer was the most successful of all at this skill, naming not Hals but Cornelis Visscher.
- The Moor, an etching by Jan Visscher after a drawing by his brother Cornelis
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See also
Notes
- ^ Mok & Stam 2023, p. 53.
- ^ Hofstede de Groot on Family Group of Five Persons; catalog number 441
- ^ a b Family Group in a Landscape on museum website
- ^ Notice of the sale to Kahn
- ^ Catalog nr. 102 of the Royal Academy Winter Exhibition in 1906
- ^ Bezold, John. “Review of: Frans Hals portraits: A family reunion”, Oud Holland Reviews, December 2020.
- ^ a b Frans Hals Exhibition catalog, 1989 for the Frans Hals Exhibition in Washington, London, and Haarlem in 1989, catalog nr. 67
- ^ April 2017 TED talk Can Art Amend History? by artist and activist Titus Kaphar: see Titus Kaphar on TED website
References
- Mok, Ineke; Stam, Dineke (2023). Haarlemmers en de slavernij (Eerste uitgave ed.). Haarlem: In de Knipscheer. ISBN 978-90-6265-923-4.
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- List of paintings
- Portrait of a Woman Standing (c. 1610–1615)
- The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616 (1616)
- Shrovetide Revellers (c. 1616–1617)
- Portrait of a Woman Standing (1618–1620)
- The Rommelpot Player (c. 1618–1620)
- Catharina Both-van der Eem (1620)
- Marriage Portrait of Isaac Massa and Beatrix van der Laen (c. 1622)
- Yonker Ramp and His Sweetheart (1623)
- The Lute Player (1623–1624)
- Laughing Cavalier (1624)
- Cunera van Baersdorp (1625)
- St. John (1625)
- St. Matthew (1625)
- St. Luke (1625)
- St. Mark (1625)
- Laughing Boy (c. 1625)
- Two Singing Boys with a Lute and a Music Book (c. 1625)
- Laughing Boy with Flute (c. 1625)
- Boy with a Glass and a Lute (1626)
- Laughing Boy with a Flute (1626)
- The Smoker (1626)
- Portrait of Anna van der Aar (1626)
- Portrait of Isaak Abrahamsz. Massa (1626)
- Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer (c. 1626)
- The Banquet of the Officers of the St Adrian Militia Company in 1627 (1627)
- The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1627 (1627)
- Portrait of a Woman in a Chair (1627)
- Laughing Fisherboy (1628)
- Girl Singing (c. 1628)
- Young Man with a Skull (1626–1628)
- The Fisher Boy (c. 1630)
- Fisher Boy with Basket (c. 1630)
- Man with a Beer Jug (c. 1630)
- Smiling Fishergirl (c. 1630)
- Willem van Heythuysen Posing with a Sword (1625–1630)
- The Gypsy Girl (1628–1630)
- Peeckelhaeringh (1628–1630)
- The Merry Drinker (c. 1628–1630)
- Cornelia Claesdr Voogt (1631)
- The Officers of the St Adrian Militia Company in 1633 (1633)
- Portrait of a Man in a Yellowish-Gray Jacket (1633)
- Portrait of Sara Wolphaerts van Diemen (c. 1630–1633)
- Portrait of Catharina Brugmans (1634)
- Portrait of a Man (1634)
- Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat (c. 1625–1635)
- Malle Babbe (c. 1633–1635)
- Lucas de Clercq (1635)
- Portrait of Feyntje Steenkiste (1635)
- Portrait of Hylck Boner (1635)
- Portrait of a Dutch Family (c. 1635)
- Meagre Company (1633–1637)
- Claes Duyst van Voorhout (1638)
- Maria Pietersdr Olycan (1638)
- Pieter Tjarck (1638)
- Portrait of a Woman (Marie Larp) (c. 1635–1638)
- Maritge Claesdr. Voogt (1639)
- The Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1639 (1639)
- Portrait of a Man with a Glove (1640)
- Portrait of Mrs. Bodolphe (1643)
- Portrait of Dorothea Berck (1644)
- Family Group in a Landscape (c. 1645–1648)
- Portrait of Stephan Geraedts, Husband of Isabella Coymans (c. 1650–1652)
- Portrait of a Man (Frick) (c. 1660)
- Portrait of a Man (Jacquemart-André (c. 1660)
- Regents of the Old Men's Almshouse (1664)
- Regentesses of the Old Men's Almshouse (c. 1664)
- The Fingernail Test (c. 1626)
- Harmen Hals (son)
- Frans Hals the Younger (son)
- Jan Hals (son)
- Reynier Hals (son)
- Nicolaes Hals (son)
- Dirck Hals (brother)
- Karel van Mander (teacher)
- Théophile Thoré-Bürger
- Seymour Slive
- Claus Grimm
- Marriage pendant portraits by Frans Hals
- Catalogues raisonnés
- Frans Hals (song)