Frans Hals
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: FRANS HALS CHAPTER I FRANS HALS THE MAN THE Hals family had long been identified with Haarlem. For a full two centuries we are told that the name occurs in the archives of the city. The ancestors of Frans Hals had served in many offices of trust and dignity. The painter's father, Pieter Claesz Hals, who had married Lysbeth Coper, was one of the municipal magistrates of the town, and in 1572 one Frans Claesz Hals, probably our painter's uncle, was a member of the Town Council (Vroedschap) of Haarlem. We are without means of knowing what exact profession Pieter Claesz Hals, the painter's father, followed. He must have lived in the city through the seven months of the winter's siege in 1572-3, and have been a witness of the scenes of heroism and brutality which place the defence of Haarlem on a level with tho
...se of Jerusalem, Saragossa, and Sagun- tum. He must have known Kenau Hasselaerl and her three hundred brave women defenders; Anthony Oliver 1 Probably the Nicolaes Hasselaar whom Hals painted (Amsterdam Gallery, 445) was a descendant of Kenau Hasselaer. the painter, De la Marck, and many others whose names have become immortal. But it is hardly probable that he took any prominent part in the defence, since all who did so perished in the butchery which followed on the surrender to the Spaniards. It has, indeed, been suggested that the reason why Frans Hals' father left his town in 1579, as we know that he did, was that he had had sympathies with the Spanish party, amongst whom were, just before the siege began, not a few of the magistracy; and that the unpopularity which this begot against him led him to withdraw. This is, however, a mere guess, and not a very probable guess; some six years elapsed before Hals migrated from Haarlem to Antwerp. It was at Antwerp, alm...
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