(Haarlem 1618-1677) and
Frans Hals
(Antwerp 1582-1666 Haarlem)
A fisher-girl before a town square,
signed with a monogram lower right: FH (ligated),
oil on panel, 32 x 27.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Dublin;
sale, Christie’s, London, 20 March 1959, lot 91;
with L. Koetser, London, 1959–61;
Collection of Graham Baron Ash (1889-1980), Wingfield Castle Norfolk;
sale, Christie’s, London, 4 October 1967, lot 138 (to Davidge);
sale, Christie’s, London 11 July 1980, lot 35;
Private collection, Germany

Literature:
C. Grimm, L’Opera Completa di Frans Hals, Milano, 1974, p.118, no. 323;
S. Slive, Frans Hals, 1974, London/ New York, p. 140, under no. D32, fig. 153;
S. Slive, Frans Hals, New York, 2014, pp. 80-81, figs. 28 and 29

We are grateful to Pieter Biesboer (with a technical observation contributed by Martin Bijl) for confirming the attribution to Frans Fransz. Hals (1618-1677) with ‘fine expressive finishing touches’ by the artist’s father, Frans Hals (1582-1666). A copy of Biesboer’s certificate (dated 21 August 2017) accompanies this lot.

The present work depicts a jovial fisher-girl in the foreground, rapidly executed beneath a dark grey cloudy sky. A lone beam of sunlight catches the typically Dutch gabled roofs of the terrace of houses behind, while the vibrancy of this scene of town life is completed by the lone figure of a woman, illuminated against the shaded side wall of the terrace. Closing off the composition to the left, a tall building overgrown with ivy can be seen, with the chimney also catching the sun’s rays.

Peter Biesboer comments that ‘the sketchy style of painting can be placed in Frans Hals’ workshop’. He adds that the highlights and shadows or ‘hoogsels en diepsels’ in and around the hands and face of the fisher-girl with her head turned to the left, possibly in response to a customer, and also in the coarse blue linen of her apron, white linen neckerchief and simple dark woollen cap, are picked out ‘wet in wet in the final paint layer’. The touch of an assistant is apparent in the slightly awkward foreshortening of the right arm of the girl, along with the thicker application of paint.

However, Biesboer writes that Frans Hals I’s ‘paintwork can be recognised by the ridges on both sides of his brushstrokes and their direct purposeful adequacy to improve on the weaknesses of the assistant’s work. However, he did not make an effort to smoothen them in the existing paintwork, on the contrary they strike out. The quick, bold brushstrokes added to the eyebrows and upper eyelids to give them more body and improve the gaze. The reddish-brown paintwork aside the bridge of the nose and the temple gives the face a more rounded shape. Hals also added corrective brushstrokes to give the neck kerchief a stronger shape and a texture of coarse linen. He added the small figure of a woman in the background,like he had done some years before in the background of the portrait of Willem van Heijthuijzen, Alte Pinakothek, Munich (inv. no. 14101.) The rather poorly executed hands were also improved with some strong brushstrokes done with a wider brush, on top of which the black deep shadows were added with a finer brush thus giving the hand gripping the basket a stronger shape and suggestion of gripping. He almost completely overpainted the dark red sleeves and dark blue of the bodice of the girls costume in order to give it a more natural shape and accentuating the presence of her body under it, again reaching a remarkable result with just some strong brushstrokes in deep black and some lighter accents to create a lively play of the sunlight falling on the girl through an open patch in the cloudy sky. With these additions master Hals was able to liven up the whole picture and give the girl an expressive charm and could make the painting pass as a work of enough quality to be sold. Finally,to mark it as a Frans Hals it was signed with the monogram FH.’

The attribution to Frans Hals II is drawn from a common hand detected in much of the output of Frans Hals’s workshop. Biesboer states that present work, ‘done on a leftover section of plank was often an exercise to train the studio assistant in the master’s style of painting.’ The execution of much of the present panel, shows a ‘long standing and precise appreciation of the technique, working method, painterly style and characteristics of the master’ leading Biesboer and Bijl posit that this is most likely the hand of one Hals’s sons, five of whom went on to become masters themselves, as recorded in the annals of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke.

A dendrochronological report by Pieter Klein (conducted September 2016) concludes the earliest possible date of execution for the panel is 1629, which means that ‘only Harmen Hals of Frans Hals the Younger could be the son which so closely collaborated’ with their father on the present work. Harmen’s style is much closer to that of Jan Miense Molenaer, who was in Frans Hals I’s workshop from 1624-29 and whose style Biesboer characterises as much ‘drier and stiffer than Frans Hals’, concluding that the present work was executed by Frans Hals II and his esteemed father.