Part 3

There is in Haarlem Stadhuis a very interesting painting by the last of these, which shows Franz Hals' Life School and some of his pupils in the year 1652. Work is in full swing, and five of the master's sons--the youngest, Nicolaes, being twenty-four years old--and Dirk Hals with Van Deelen, Molyn, Berckheijde himself, and his little brother Gerritsz, seated at a table, are drawing from a nude model. The master is by the door, chatting with Philippe Wouwermans, who has just popped in to see how things are getting on.

It is said that Hals "sweated" his pupils by making them draw and paint subjects for which he paid them little or nothing, and which he sold at fair prices to meet his weekly tavern reckonings. Adriaen Brouwer is named as "living-in" at the Halsian establishment, with an uncomfortable bed, insufficient food, and scanty clothing! Be these tales what they may, there is characteristic evidence that Hals and his pupils lived on good terms. An amusing story is told by the Haarlem historian and biographer, Jacob Campo Weyerman, in his "Sevens-Beschrijoingen der Nederlondsche Konst-Schilders," of the goings on at the Life School.

The master's addiction to strong drink called for energetic action, and the older pupils were accustomed of an evening to take it in turn to fetch him home from his cups, undress him, and tuck him comfortably into bed.

"Now when Franz, lying in bed, thought he was alone in his room, his piety came to the surface; for however tipsy he might be he generally closed his halting prayer with this petition: 'Dear Lord, take me soon up into Heaven!' Some pupils who heard him repeat this request night after night decided to test one day whether their master was really in earnest, and Adriaen Brouwer--that ape of humanity--undertook to carry out the joke. Brouwer, in company with another pupil called Dirk Van Deelen, bored four holes in the ceiling, right above Franz' bedstead, and through these lowered four strong ropes, which they fastened to the four corners of the bed, and then waited eagerly for their master's return home. Hals returned towards night in merry mood, and his pupils helped him to bed according to their wont, took away the light, and then crept quietly upstairs to set their plan in motion. As soon as Franz began his usual orison, 'Lord, take me up soon into Heaven,' they drew him and his bedstead gently up a little, whereupon Hals, half dazed, fancying that his prayer was being answered literally, altered his tone, and began to cry out lustily: 'Not so fast, dear Lord! not so fast!'"

Hardly able to restrain their mirth the mischievous young dogs quietly let their burden down, slipped off the ropes, and themselves slipped away, to tell their fellows the joke. "Franz," continues Weyerman, "did not discover the trick until several years after!"

The years 1631 and 1632 were lean years in Hals' output, but the year 1633, which gave us "Portrait of a Man" at the National Gallery--a fresh complexioned, easy going gentleman about thirty to forty years of age, in an astonishingly voluminous ruff, quite a bygone fashion in that year--saw a _chef-d'oeuvre de chefs-d'oeuvres_, another "_Schutters-stuk_," put up in the Stadhuis at Haarlem.

"The St Adriaen's Doelen," No. 2, consists of fourteen officers, nearly all of whom are gazing good-humouredly right out at their visitors, and inviting all and sundry to join in the conviviality. Each face is a pleasant character-study, for each man has dined well and is content.

Colonel Jan Claesz Van Loo is seated on the left, holding a stout walking-stick--probably he has contracted gout since his appearance in 1627! Seven of the officers hold halberds--a decided novelty in accessories, which adds greatly to the picturesque effect. One wonders whether anybody had whispered to Hals the news that Velazquez had painted his "Surrender of Breda" with halberds and lances _galore_! Anyhow Hals would not be caught napping by an intrusive Spaniard!

The Group is far and away the most easily arranged of all the _Schutters-stuken_. The waving foliage and smiling landscape predicate breeze and sun, for the gathering is _al fresco_ in the gardens of Roosendaal, the Hampton Court of Haarlem. The officer seated upon the table is Lieutenant Hendrik Pot--a favourite pupil--a speaking likeness.

Fashions have changed, they are richer and more decorative with silken stitching and laced scarves. The colours, greys, greens, browns, and dull blues are softened by the leafy environment. "_En plein air_" is the cry of modern Impressionists, but here we have it, where, perhaps, we should not look for it. This is in truth one of the world's chief masterpieces, and the efforts its execution called forth told greatly upon its creator.

Certainly he went on painting, and probably he went on carousing too; but silence again settles down upon him, and a meagre list of fifteen signed and dated portraits completes his work until 1637.

We find him now not at Haarlem, but at Amsterdam; not drinking, but painting--painting what Dr. Bürgher, the art critic, asserts is "the most astounding picture of the Dutch School." Probably Hals frequently visited the capital of the chief province, there to see what other artists were doing, and to sample the pleasures of its convivial life.

His visit in 1657 was of considerable duration, for he was painting "The Officers of the Civic Guard" under their commander, Colonel Reynier Reaels. There are sixteen full-length, life-size figures, posed after the manner of the Haarlem _Schutters-stuken_. They are clad in dark-blue uniforms, with the exception of the Standard-bearer--a gorgeous individual in golden brown, with leggings, laced and bowed, his arms akimbo, bearing himself with such a swagger as only Franz Hals knew how to paint.

This splendid portrait group hangs at the Rijks Museum in Amsterdam, at no great distance from Rembrandt Van Rijn's "Night Watch," so we can take stock of both together.

It is not a little significant that Amsterdamers, famed for what the Tuscans used to call "_il Spirito del Campanile_," should have had to go to Haarlem for their man! Were there not painters on the spot, and what about Rembrandt, he was not very busy in 1637? No; no one could do this sort of thing so well as Hals.

In 1639 he completed his quintet of _Schutters-stuken_ or _Doelen_--portrait groups in Haarlem Stadhuis; his patrons were once more "The Officers of St. Joris' Shooting Guild."

Here we are in the open with the wind swaying the unfurled banners and rustling the leaves of the trees. The _rendezvous_ is the orchard of the Hofje Van Oud Alkemude de XII. Apostelen, with its garden-pavilion, in the tower of which Hals is said to have painted a _Schutters-stuk_; beyond are the Haarlem woods.

The Group consists of nineteen Officers, with Colonel Jan Van Loo. The men are arranged in two somewhat stiff lines--perhaps they all asked front places and paid well! With his usual modesty Hals has put himself in the back row, but in much better guise than his next neighbour, a distinctly _blasé_ individual. They are all well-set-up men, and dressed in the new fashion, tending rather to effeminacy.

The atmosphere and illuminations are vibrant, but the colours are restrained, the shadows are grey, and the animation does not equal that of the 1633 Group. Perhaps Hals was degenerating with the passing age--certainly he was ageing.

However, he finished off his best decade with a remarkable little snapshot portrait, a fisher-lad of Katwyk. "_De Strandlooper_" he has called it; it hangs in Antwerp Museum. He saw the boy running up and down the dunes; he was an odd-looking bit of humanity.

"Sit down just where you are," said Hals, "fold your arms, and don't take your eyes off me." A rough drawing was soon knocked off, just to fix values, and then the master added, "Come along with me now to Haarlem, and half a Carolus guelder for you." Then he fixed the oddest of odd smiles, and the "Beach urchin" remains to prove that the old man, vigorous, had lost very little of his cunning after all.

* * * * *

The last twenty-five years of Hals' life were marked by experiences wholly unlike the circumstances of the preceding decade.

If between 1630-1640 he approached Velazquez and painted dignified magnates and others, with a brush dipped in gold and a palette of luminous colours, in the end of his days he was near Rembrandt with no less characteristic groups and individuals, and his hues are silvery and his shadows impressive.

The _Regenten Stuken_, the "Five Governors of the St. Elizabeth Almshouse" or _Oudemaanenhuis_, exposed in the Haarlem Stadhuis in 1641, might, for all the world, be the work of the great Amsterdam master, just as the latter's "Staalmeester's" of 1661 might be his.

The Group in question consists of five most serious and reverent city fathers, seated comfortably at their Board table. Not a bit of worldly conceit, not a decorative adjunct of any kind, adorns the composition, but it is a perfect achievement. The sombre black garments and steeple-crown hats have a lustre of their own, and, standing well out of the greyish-green wall behind, they throw up wonderfully facial expression and manual dexterity. The plain linen collars and well-starched cuffs tone down the ashen-red shadows upon the skin, and the clustering locks of long black hair, tinged with grey, form halos around the wrinkles.

Haarlem possessed many charitable institutions to which the general title "_Hofjes_" was attached. It became the happy custom, well on in the seventeenth century, for wealthy citizens to build and endow almshouses, hospitals, and the like--in the first instances as monuments of individual prominence and ultimately as memorials of family pride. Founders and their relatives were the earliest governors, and then administrative powers were merged in trusts and municipal offices, and foremost citizens formed their Boards.

Franz Hals' great good-nature and his merry haphazard way of life made him a favourite everywhere--he was everybody's friend. His appointment in 1643 as "Vinder" of the Haarlem Lodge of the Artists' Guild of St. Luke was very popular. The functions of the office exactly suited the free-and-easy master-painter; they were analogous to those which attached to the corresponding Italian office of _provvidetore_--controller, caterer, and perhaps toast-master, all rolled into one.

Nobody has testified to Vrouw Lysbeth's satisfaction at this promotion; it was a real ray of sunshine in the gathering clouds of age and anxiety. No doubt she still smiled--not as naïvely as in that garden green in 1630, but hopefully.

But Hals was already beginning to grow indolent. Was it the natural change of life, or was it the effect of self-indulgence? Who shall say? Charity thinks and speaks kindly we know. Anyhow nine long years steal quietly along, and all the signed and dated work he did was just nine portraits and not one of them of marked excellence.

Poverty began to look in at the windows of the house in the Peeuselaarsteeg, what time silence or indolence settled there, but what cared the merry old painter, for love opened the door, and kept it upon the latch--Lysbeth did not chide Franz, and Franz did not vex Lysbeth.

Twenty years or so before Hals had picked up many a splendid subject for his portrait-characterisation or portrait-caricature in Haarlem markets, and many a flighty _markt-deern_, besides the untidy fish-girl of 1630, had been his model. Then he loved young girls--at seventy his friends were _viele deerne_ of the _Kraegs_ or common taverns.

One old lady had for many a long day taken his fancy, not that she was comely, sober, or fair spoken, quite the reverse, nevertheless her striking play of features and the wrinkling of her leathery skin had an occult fascination for Franz.

They called her "Hille Bobbe," but her name was Aletta or Alle Bol or Bollij; and she lived in a hovel by the Fish-market. Nobody ever got the better of old Hille, but she let everybody know what she thought of him and his!

At Lille is a "Laughing Hussy," painted by Hals in 1645; at Berlin is the old lady with her tankard and an owl, done in 1650; and at Dresden the same _viele deern_ is scolding a yokel, who is smoking over her stall of unboiled lobsters, 1652 (?). They are all three most simply painted in black and grey, and just faint traces of ochre and red. The deep shadows point to a meagre palette and a brush worn down, but the result is striking and original. Nobody knows what the owl had to do with the old lady, probably a painters' joke at the model's expense.

In ten more years Franz Hals signed and dated no more than ten pictures. Was he idle? Was he ill? Was he dissolute? We cannot say; we have no data to go upon. The next note we have is an alarm signal, for, in 1652, one Jan Ykess, a baker, obtained a warrant whereby he sued Hals for two hundred Carolus guilders on account of comestibles supplied to him and his wife. A distress was issued, and the forced sale of three thin mattresses and bolsters, a ricketty armoire, and an old oak-table, with five oil paintings, barely sufficed to clear the bill.

Other creditors, and there were not a few, got nothing; apparently there were no other assets. But two years later Hals gave his butcher of "The Merry Trio," a painting by Jan Razet, "St. John the Baptist preaching," by way of compensation.

This is indeed a sad revelation, and its sadness is intensified by the apparent want of filial piety on the part of Franz' sons and daughters. They were all living, and, except Pieter, domiciled in Haarlem. Only Maria was unmarried. All were in good circumstances. Nicolaes, "_Vinder_" in 1662, had been a member of the Corporation since 1655. Why they did nothing to assist their parents in their distress nobody has recorded. There is no note of family feuds: perhaps Franz' pride refused natural assistance.

In 1655, and again in 1660, Hals painted and dated many portraits, as though he was forced to do something to keep the wolf from the door. Many of these are remarkable, not only as the work of an old man, but as exhibitions of new methods. "René Descartes," at the Louvre, and "Tyman Oosdorp," at Berlin--reminiscent perhaps of "Jan Hornebeeck of Leyden," at Brussels, painted in 1648--have fixed unhappy faces, all in dull black and grey, with dark shadows suffusing everything. Surely they are reflections of the painter's darkening view of life in grumbling, unmerry mood.

The clouds, however, appear to have been at least partially dissipated, for in the latter year we have a smiling face again, and, perhaps, one of the last which smiled on "Hals of Antwerp!" The _Schlapphut_, "The Slouch Hat," now at Cassel, is a real _chef-d'oeuvre_. A young man, seated sideways, with his arm across the back of his chair, looks out of the grey-green-black background with a saucy air. He is saying, "I wonder what you think of me!" It takes a little time to focus this impression, for Hals has dashed on his pigments almost too liberally, and he has gashed and smeared the mass with his hardest brush. When we do get the point of view, we feel disposed immediately to snub the young upstart for his impertinence.

In spite of these spurts, and others, misfortune fell the way of Franz and Lysbeth Hals. In the spring of 1662 the old man applied to the Municipal Council for assistance. His plea was not in vain, for, with characteristic good-fellowship, a dole was immediately forthcoming--fuel and aliment--and with them a benefaction of 150 Carolus guilders (circa £26).

Old Hals could still, vigorous old fellow that he was, hold his palette and his brush--and to good use too--nor did he quite lack for patrons. Upon the Board of the _Oudevrouwenhuis_ (Old Women's Alms House) were several old chums of his who, in solemn conclave met, agreed unanimously to commission the aged master to paint two portrait-groups--one of themselves, and the other of the Lady Governors of the Béguinage for old and reduced gentlewomen, which Mijnheer Nicolaes Van Beresteyn had founded in 1611.

This was a noble act of charity conceived in the best possible spirit, for any fear of Franz' ability was quite outweighed by the wish to minister, so as not to offend in any way, his _amour propre_. And Hals set to work upon the last efforts of his life, and finished and dated both groups in 1664. He was eighty-four; and thus they are in the Stadhuis, side by side with his five festive _Schutters-stuken_.

The _Regentessen van der Oudevrouwenhuis_ (The Lady Governors of the Old Women's Alms House) are not distinguishable for youth or beauty, and yet the five old faces are very attractive in their sternness. Probably they were quite prepared to resent any impropriety on the part of the jovial old artist. Their pursed-up lips, their peering gaze, and the muscular contraction of their hands convey this impression. Their garments are as plain as their persons, and there is nothing decorative in the composition--everything is subdued black and grey, but the illumination and animation are splendidly evident although held in check.

The _Regenten van der Oudemannenhuis_ (The Governors of the Old Men's Alms House), on the other hand, has much less force, and, compared with the earlier group of 1641, it is nerveless and moribund. The five Governors are old, weary, and sad. The colours are greyish, the brushwork feeble, and expressionless faces match the ashen pallor of the skin. Their hands, too, have lost their grip, and there is no curl in their hair. Humour is no longer Hals' painting mixture, the pathos of "the passing" is upon him; and yet, with an evident expiring effort, the youngest of the five old men actually displays the gaiety of a scarlet knee-ribbon--it is the last impression of a parting touch!

And now the brush falls from the painter's hand; the few colours left upon his palette are dry; and his enfeebled vigour is tired out. No doubt the emolument he received for these two most impressive, most touching portrait-groups was in the nature of a pension to keep him and his old wife in something like comfort till the end.

For that end Franz Hals had not long to wait. Perhaps it is as well that we have no account of his sufferings and his death. Only one more historical note can be adduced to complete the life's story of "Hals of Haarlem"--the notice of his burial. On September 1, 1666, all that remained of him was buried, with some amount of circumstance, in the Groote Keerke of St. Bavon. His body rests in the choir, with the ashes of Haarlem's most famous sons, and, if no meretricious sculptured memorial exists to fix the very spot, the monogram, upon a flat stone underfoot, "F. H.," reminds the pilgrim to the painter's shrine of all he was and all he did--simple and unaffected.

* * * * *

Poor old Lysbeth survived her husband many years, as poor as poor could be. In 1675 she made a pathetic appeal for relief, and the miserable pittance of fourteen _sous_ a week was accorded her. The dear old soul languished and died, with apparently no child at hand to comfort her. No record of her last hours tells where she died--probably in some _Oudevrouwenhuis_ or other, and of her grave no man knoweth.

The plates are printed by BEMROSE & SONS, LTD., Derby and London The text at the BALLANTYNE PRESS, Edinburgh