MASP

The earliest reports about the life of Frans Hals tell that his family moved from Antwerp to Harlem, in the Netherlands, in 1585, fleeing from the Spanish occupation and the fierce persecution of Protestants by Catholics. Hals entered the city’s artists guild in 1610 and quickly gained recognition and a large clientele among the well-heeled bourgeois. His naturalist bent was manifested in his depiction of everyday scenes and in individual and group portraits, his specialty, executed either on commission or because of his interest in the character and physiognomy of the models. Hal’s technique aims to convey the theme in a straightforward and lively way with quick, irregular brushstrokes that reflect the artist’s emotional state. This pictorial procedure was an important legacy for 19th-century modern realism. The portraits Captain Andries van Hoorn and Maria Pietersdochter Olycan, the captain’s second wife, were produced on the occasion of their marriage, in 1638. They were both members of the wealthy beer-producing families of Haarlem. In the portraits, there is precision in the details along with a certain informality in the presentation of the characters, which in no wise compromises the evidence of their social position. Captain Andries was also portrayed by Hals in the canvas representing the banquet of the officers of the St. Adrian Militia (1633), who were elected among the notables of the city of Harlem, and was the city’s mayor in 1655.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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Beginning in the 1630s, Hals worked regularly for the family of Andries van Hoorn’s father-in-law, Jacob Pietersz Olycan (five times town burgomaster), for whom he painted at least nine portraits (Descargues 1968, p. 55), including those of Maria Herster Pietersdr, born in 1608 and one of fifteen children of Jacob Pietersz and Maritge Claesdr Vooght. The alliance formed between the Olycans and the Van Hoorns, in 1638, – the great brewery clans of Haarlem –, were by no means unexpected and Hals often received commissions from this top stratum of the town’s elite bourgeoisie. Extraordinary portraitists, such as Johannes Verspronk, Pieter Claesz Soutman, or Pieter Fransz de Grebber, catered to a clientele that was at times equally well-to-do, however less powerful, or the large Catholic families that ranked second in the town hierarchy (Beisboer, in Slive 1989, p. 35).

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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