It isn’t just the laughter you see – the drunken laughter that 17^th century master painter Frans Hals was famous for portraying.

Another side of this Haarlem painter, who was born in Antwerp, is on show at a mayor exhibition at the Rijksmuseum, opening on Friday.

Although his patrons were some of the wealthiest people in the world, “Golden Age” Dutch living the high life thanks to their trade in sugar, tobacco and other people, Hals also hinted at the lives in their shadows.

The 48 paintings on show in Amsterdam include the jolly works for which he is renowned but also “mad” Babbe, a woman with a mental health condition in a Haarlem workhouse where one of Hals’ sons lived for a time, prostitutes, rotten-toothed fishing lads and a black, enslaved boy pushed to the back in a family portrait yet looking out from the middle of the frame.

“Laughter is infectious and if we walk through the exhibition, it is difficult not to laugh, though,” said Taco Dibbits, director general of the Rijksmuseum at a press launch. “His brushstrokes dance across the canvas: he brings people to life and with him it is all about movement.”

Drunkard

Although now less popular than Dutch painters such as Rembrandt and Vermeer, Hals was lauded at various times – inspiring both Vincent van Gogh and Éduoard Manet. “We want to portray these three masters of Dutch painting, because all three show the very different things you can do with paint,” said Dibbits.

“With Rembrandt, it was about the human condition, humanity, with Vermeer, it is about stillness and the moment of joy and with Frans Hals, it is about movement. Everyone knew his name in the 19^th century and he was unbelievably popular. Now you see that he needs a real podium…but Frans Hals invented modern painting.”

Friso Lammertse, curator of 17^th century art at the Rijksmuseum, believes that Hals was later unfairly dismissed by a puritan public that misunderstood his ‘loose touch’, expressionist style. “He plays with illusion but also with the materiality of artwork,” he said. “And when he did this, he was the most avant-garde of the avant-garde in Europe. He was often portrayed in the 19^th century as a drunkard, someone so drunk that he couldn’t paint straight. He may have liked a glass or two but his loose style was a very conscious choice.”

History

Frans Hals was born in Antwerp around 1582 to 1584, fled as a child with his parents to Haarlem – along with many Flemish artists – and emerged as a master painter in his thirties. Little archival material remains about his life and what we know – says Frans Hals Museum head of collections Marrigje Rikken – is often furnished by court documents describing his debts or a row over an unfinished portrait of Amsterdam civic guards.

The Militia Company of District XI under the Comand of Captain Reynier Reael, known as “The Meagre Company” may have chosen to commission Hals because a Haarlem artist was cheaper. But the painting, on show in the Rijksmuseum, had to be finished by artist Pieter Codde due to a dispute over who should do the travelling.

Clearly, he had enough local work and Hals continued to paint into his eighties, developing his own unique, expressionist style and training a new generation of painters before his death in 1666.

Lucrative

The Rijksmuseum exhibition displays some of the posturing portraits which would have been so lucrative for Frans Hals – especially these group portraits of civic guards where according to Rikken each participant was charged 60 guilders (what the Dutch paid for Manhattan). The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616, is one such work, loaned for the first time ever from Haarlem, with special dispensation from the mayor.

Another highlight of the show – which has previously been in London in a slightly different version and will later travel to Berlin – is The Regentesses of the Old Men’s Almshouse. American painter James Whistler was apparently charmed by this painting, even being allowed to touch it shortly before his own death, according to author Benjamin Moser.

But there are also informal works by Hals, featuring perhaps his children, local market sellers and the misfits who were not part of wealthy Dutch portrait-commissioning society. Different rooms unite “rough” paintings, those that breathe, big works, laughter, that familial twinkle, small, bold and “smearing” paintings with particularly visible drips – a technique he taught his students. One notable omission is Two Laughing Boys with a Mug of Beer, stolen from a museum in Leerdam during the pandemic and still missing – although another Van Gogh thought to have been stolen by the same gang has been returned.

Haarlem

An expanded collection of 17 Frans Hals paintings, meanwhile, is also on show at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem. Lidewij de Koekkoek, director, said that their collection – and an intimate tour – really fills in the gaps or questions left from the Rijksmuseum display: “If you really want to get to know Frans Hals, his city, his life, his time, you must come to Haarlem,” she said.

But the show in Amsterdam, which runs from February 16 until June 9, is already a hot ticket, filled with characters who are somehow instantly recognisable as Dutch – from the ostentatious modesty or competitive display to the jolly raised glass and welcoming twinkle in the eye.

“Frans Hals is a modern painter because of his brushstroke,” added Dibbets, “but also because the people you see are people from every day.”