Workshop of Frans Hals

Baron Léopold Double (1812-1881), Paris, by 1867;

His estate sale, Paris, Pillet, Mannheim, and Féral, 30 May 1881, lot 11 (as Hals);

Where acquired by Alfred Gaucher, on behalf of Prince Pavel Pavlovich Demidoff (1839-1885), for 30,000 fr.;

With Henri Hecht (1840-1891), Paris, 1883;

With E. Spellman, London;

Charles L. Hutchinson, New York and then Chicago, by 1897;

By whom bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1925 (inv. no. 1925.713);

From whom acquired by E. and A. Silberman Galleries, New York, 1949;

Private collection, England, by 1974;

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's, 9 July 2015, lot 119 (as Circle of Hals);

Where acquired.

Paris, Palais de la Présidence du Corps Législatif, 23 April 1874, no. 227 (lent by M. Double);

New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Hudson-Fulton Celebration, 20 September - 20 November 1909, no. 26 (lent by Charles L. Hutchinson);

Chicago Art Institute, long-term loan, circa 1910 - 1914 (lent by Charles L. Hutchinson);

Detroit Institute of Arts, An Exhibition of Fifty Paintings by Frans Hals, 10 January - 28 February 1935, no. 35 (lent by the Art Institute of Chicago).

Explication des ouvrages de peinture, Exposés au profit de la colonisation de l'Algérie, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1874, p. 44, cat. no. 227 (as Hals);

W. Bode, Studien zur Geschichte der holländischen Malerei, Braunschweig 1883, p. 83, cat. no. 43 (as Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen);

E.W. Moes, Iconographia Batava, Amsterdam 1897, vol. I, pp. 421-422, cat. no. 3507-4;

E.W. Moes, Frans Hals, sa vie et son oeuvre, Brussels 1909, p. 102, cat. no. 47 (as Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen);

Souvenir Program and Guide: Hudson-Fulton Celebration, New York 1909, pp. 15-16 (as Hals);

W.R. Valentiner, The Hudson-Fulton Celebration, Catalogue of a Loan Exhibition of Old Dutch Masters Held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1909, vol. I, p. 27, cat. no. 26, reproduced (as Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen);

H. de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Painters of the seventeenth Century, vol. III, London 1910, p. 59, cat. no. 189 (as Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen);

W. Bode and M.J. Binder, Frans Hals, Sein Leben und seine Werke, Berlin 1914, p. 63, cat. no. 226, reproduced fig. 144a (as Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen);

W.R. Valentiner, Frans Hals, Des meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart and Berlin 1921, p. 152, reproduced (as Hals);

W.R. Valentiner, Frans Hals, Des meisters Gemälde, Berlin and Leipzig 1923, p. 164, (as Hals);

W.R. Valentiner, An Exhibition of Fifty Paintings by Frans Hals, exhibition catalogue, Detroit 1935, n.p., cat. no. 35, reproduced (as Hals, Portrait of Willem van Heythuysen (?));

S. Slive, Frans Hals, London 1974, vol. III, p. 146, cat. no. D51, reproduced fig. 172 (under "Doubtful and Wrongly Attributed Paintings");

C. Grimm and E.C. Montagni, L'opera completa di Frans Hals, Milan 1974, p. 111, cat. no. 223, reproduced (as Attributed to Hals);

C. Grimm, Frans Hals and his Workshop: Monograph and Catalogue Raisonne, online catalogue, 2024, cat. no. A4.3.5 (as Workshop of Hals, circa 1633-1635).

ENGRAVED

By Jules Jacquemart, 1867.

Long regarded as an autograph work by Frans Hals, this animated bust-length portrait has more recently been situated within the ambit of the master’s workshop. In his revised catalogue raisonné, Claus Grimm proposed that the painting was executed after a sketch by Hals and “created in his immediate surroundings,” noting that the pronounced angularity of the brushwork points toward a close affinity with Harmen Hals, the artist’s son. Set within a convincingly painted feigned oval, the composition typifies the informal vitality associated with Hals’s portraiture, even as its execution does not rise to his virtuosic level.

The sitter, shown half-length and turned slightly to the right, engages the viewer directly with a knowing smile. His pointed beard, broad-brimmed hat, and dark coat are enlivened by the lace-trimmed collar, whose tassels the man toys with in his right hand, while his left holds a pair of gloves. The painting’s early—and erroneous—identification of the sitter as Willem van Heythuysen can be traced to Jules Jacquemart’s 1867 engraving of the work, produced when it was in the Double collection.