Frans Hals in America: Another Embarrassment of Riches

Frans Hals,  Merrymakers at Shrovetide, detail,  ca. 1616–17,  New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The story of Frans Hals in America has been nearly a century and a half in the making. The legendary museum director W. R. Valentiner was the first to address the topic, as is seen in his 1936 survey volume Frans Hals in America. Unfortunately, the pages of his book are filled with scores of misattributions. In addition to discussing early collecting and scholarship on Hals, I will update the story begun by Valentiner and continued by Seymour Slive and others from the second half of the twentieth century to the present. Today, the flow of Hals’s paintings coming to America has slowed to a trickle, but notable acquisitions continue to reach our shores. The content of this essay certainly dovetails with a number of Walter Liedtke’s scholarly interests. In addition to his publications on Hals at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one discovers that Walter was also interested in collecting history on this side of the Atlantic, as is seen in his 1990 article entitled “Dutch Painting in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals” for the Great Dutch Paintings from America exhibition catalogue.

DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.5

Acknowledgements

I dedicate this article with fondness and admiration to the memory of Walter Liedtke. As a young graduate student who studied with Walter during his tenure at The Ohio State University, I was inspired by his gifts as a teacher and scholar as he opened my eyes to the glories of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.

Frans Hals,  Merrymakers at Shrovetide,  ca. 1616–17,  New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 1 Frans Hals, Merrymakers at Shrovetide, ca. 1616–17, oil on canvas, 131.4 x 99.7 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913, inv. 14.40.605 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Woman, 1635,  New York, The Frick Collection
Fig. 2 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman, 1635, oil on canvas, 116.5 x 93.3 cm. New York, The Frick Collection, Henry Clay Frick Bequest, 1910, inv. 1910.1.72 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Style of Frans Hals,  Malle Babbe,  ca. 1640s,  New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 3 Style of Frans Hals, Malle Babbe, ca. 1640s, oil on canvas, 74.9 x 61 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, 1871, inv. 71.76 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Fisher Girl,  ca. 1630–32,  Private collection (formerly Brooklyn Art Museum, New York)
Fig. 4 Frans Hals, Fisher Girl, ca. 1630–32, oil on canvas, 80.6 x 66.7 cm. Private collection (formerly Brooklyn Art Museum, New York) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Willem Coymans, 1645,  Washington D. C., National Gallery of Art
Fig. 5 Frans Hals, Willem Coymans, 1645, oil on canvas, 77 x 64 cm. Washington D. C., National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937, inv. 1937.1.69 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Family Group in a Landscape,  ca. 1648,  Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Fig. 6 Frans Hals, Family Group in a Landscape, ca. 1648, oil on canvas, 202 x 285 cm. Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, inv. 179 (1934.8)  (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Man,  ca. 1660–66,  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
Fig. 7 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1660–66, oil on canvas, 85.8 x 66.9 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Mrs. Antonie Lilienfeld in Memory of Dr. Leon Lilienfeld, 1966, inv. 66.1054 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
  1. 1. This assertion is in large part proven by the sheer number of pictures assigned to the two painters that entered America during this period. A case in point are the two volumes authored by Valentiner, in 1931 and 1936 respectively, that showcased the number of Rembrandts (175) and Halses (105) that he accepted. Although Valentiner’s connoisseurship must be questioned, and the actual number of autograph works far fewer, the relative numbers still speak to the popularity of these artists among American collectors.

  2. 2. Hals was rehabilitated from near obscurity by the Realists and Impressionists, largely due to his remarkable brushwork. See Frances S. Jowell in Frans Hals, exh. cat., Seymour Slive et al. (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art; London: Royal Academy of Arts; and Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum; in association with Prestel Verlag, 1989–90), 61–86.

  3. 3. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have arrived at differing opinions regarding the number of Hals’s extant paintings. Although connoisseurship is not central to the discussion here, it is worth noting that American collectors likely acquired a greater number of paintings misattributed to Hals than their European counterparts, due to market demand.

  4. 4. Walter Liedtke “Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals,” in Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat., Ben Broos et al. (The Hague: Mauritshuis, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1990–91), 14–59.

  5. 5. For a discussion of Hals and modernity, see Christopher D. M. Atkins, The Signature Style of Frans Hals: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), esp. 195–237.

  6. 6. For a discussion of painters influenced by Dutch artists active during the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as an overview of the early collecting of Dutch old masters by American collectors, see Annette Stott, Holland Mania:The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Books, 1998), 19–42.

  7. 7. For a recent overview of this phenomenon, consult the essays found in Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals, ed. Esmée Quodbach, Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America (New York: The Frick Collection/University Park: Penn State University Press, 2014). 

  8. 8. Discussions and color illustrations of these pictures and others by Hals given to the MMA appear in Liedtke’s catalogue of the museum’s Dutch paintings: Walter Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), 250–304.

  9. 9. Before they were dispersed at auction, these paintings appeared in catalogues published by Yerkes: Charles T. Yerkes, Catalogue of the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes(Chicago, 1893) and Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes, esq., New York, 2 vols. (Boston, 1904).

  10. 10. See Liedtke, Dutch Paintings (2007).

  11. 11. For the sake of brevity while considering the large number of paintings mentioned, readers are asked to consult Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols. (London: Phaidon, 1970–74; 2nd ed., 2014, for color plates) to link the names of collectors and/or locations with the paintings cited. One can also find information on museum websites, collection catalogues, and especially Wikipedia’s web page “Paintings by Frans Hals.”

  12. 12. Bode (Studien zur Geschichte der Holländischen Malerei [Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1883], 80–92) listed 155 paintings by Hals.

  13. 13. Equally surprising, another cataloguer, Gerald S. Davies, Frans Hals (London: G. Bell 1908), listed only eight pictures by Hals in America in his book on the artist.

  14. 14. W. R. Valentiner, Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Old Dutch Masters/Hudson Fulton Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1909). For a discussion of Valentiner, the exhibition, and its legacy, see Dennis P. Weller, “The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition of 1909 and Its Legacy,” Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America 1609–2009, ed. Joyce D. Goodfriend et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 237–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004163683.i-367.31

  15. 15. For a book-length biography of Valentiner, see Margaret Sterne, The Passionate Eye: The Life of William R. Valentiner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980).

  16. 16. The Raleigh catalogue also contained a list of Valentiner’s publications, including those cited here. It should be noted that many of the Hals paintings shown in this exhibition and others often represented new arrivals to America, many of which Valentiner had vetted for dealers and collectors. See Masterpieces of Art: W. R. Valentiner Memorial Exhibition, exh. cat., comp. James B. Byrnes (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959).

  17. 17. W. R. Valentiner, Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 318 Abbildungen, Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben 28 (Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1921); Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 322 Abbildungen, 2nd ed. (1923).

  18. 18. For a listing of these publications, see Masterpieces of Art, 306. They can also be found in Liedtke, Dutch Paintings, 2 vols. (2007), 1053–4.

  19. 19. Rather than reflecting the history of Frans Hals collecting in America, this volume served largely as a snapshot of the pictures that were in North America by 1936.

  20. 20. Wilhelm von Bode and Moritz Julius Binder provided an interim report of the shift of Hals’s paintings to America in their catalogue on the artist: Frans Hals: His Life and Work,trans. M. Brockwell (Berlin: Photographische Gesellschaft, 1914). This two-volume work included fifty-six paintings in American collections, a number that surpassed Hofstede de Groot’s accounting of forty-three in 1910 (Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, trans. and ed. Edward G. Hawke, 8 vols. [London: Macmillan and Co., 1908–27]). For Hals, see vol. 3 (1910).

  21. 21. See Slive, Frans Hals (1970–74).

  22. 22. The two paintings were formerly owned by the Mogmar Art Foundation, New York, and by John R. Thompson Jr., Chicago, respectively.

  23. 23. The Brooklyn painting has long remained on the art market in New York, an example of questionable judgment in deaccessioning. The other two pictures were less controversial, in that the Toledo work is no longer accepted as by Hals, and only Slive (2014) continued to support the Corcoran attribution. Toledo, in fact, recently acquired a major painting by Hals; and the Corcoran deaccessioned its picture in 2013.

  24. 24. In addition to Valentiner’s 1936 publication, see his Klassiker der Kunst volumes from 1921 and 1923.

  25. 25. Henry James, “The Metropolitan Museum’s 1871 Purchase,” first published Atlantic Monthly, June 1872. Reprinted in The Painter’s Eye: Notes and Essays on the Pictorial Arts by Henry James, ed. John L. Sweeney (London: R. Hart Davis, 1956), 52–56.

  26. 26. See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1996), 65–90.

  27. 27. Slive, Frans Hals (1970–74).

  28. 28. Slive et al., Frans Hals (1989–90). This volume includes an extensive bibliography, including Slive’s other contributions devoted to Hals.

  29. 29. Slive, Frans Hals (1970–74). One also needs to mention the greatly reduced oeuvre catalogue published by the German scholar Claus Grimm in 1990, which was based on his 1972 study of Hals: Claus Grimm, Frans Hals: Entwicklung, Werkanalyse, Gesamtkatalog (Berlin: Mann, 1972) and Claus Grimm, Frans Hals: The Complete Work, trans. Jürgen Riehle (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990).

  30. 30. Interestingly, pendants for the paintings in San Diego and St. Louis can be found in Detroit and Kansas City. University museums also shared in the riches; e.g., the Portrait of Cornelis Guldewagen came as a gift to the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1953.

  31. 31. Private collectors include Thomas Kaplan in New York (The Leiden Gallery); Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, Boston; and the owners of the Ivor Collection. The diamond-shaped Singing Girl and Boy with a Violin in the Ivor Collection cast light on the journey some of these paintings have taken. Prior to arriving at their current home, they were owned by Yerkes, another New Yorker, Chicagoan R. F. Angell, and a Montreal collector.

  32. 32. Grimm, Frans Hals (1990); see his concordance with Slive’s findings on pp. 291–92.

  33. 33. A number of portraits by Hals’s son Jan can be found in American collections. The one in Raleigh, Portrait of a Gentleman of 1644, previously carried an altered Frans Hals monogram.

  34. 34. Walter Liedtke, “The Classic Work on Frans Hals, Even Better,” Art Newspaper (May 2015): 67, 75.

  35. 35. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings (2007).

  36. 36. Walter Liedtke, “Frans Hals Style and Substance,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Summer 2011).

Atkins, Christopher D. M. The Signature Style of Frans Hals: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012.

Bode, Wilhelm von. Studien zur Geschichte der Holländischen Malerei. Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1883.

Bode, Wilhelm von, and Moritz Julius Binder. Frans Hals: His Life and Work. Translated by M. W. Brockwell. 2 vols. Berlin: Photographische Gesellschaft, 1914.

Davies, Gerald S. Frans Hals. 1st ed., 1904. London: G. Bell, 1908.

Grimm, Claus. Frans Hals: Entwicklung, Werkanalyse, Gesamtkatalog. Berlin: Mann, 1972.

Grimm, Claus. Frans Hals: The Complete Work. Translated by Jürgen Riehle. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990.

Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. Translated and edited by Edward G. Hawke. 8 vols. London: Macmillan and Co., 1908–27.

James, Henry. “The Metropolitan Museum’s 1871 Purchase.” First published Atlantic Monthly, June 1872. Reprinted in The Painter’s Eye: Notes and Essays on the Pictorial Arts by Henry James, edited by John L. Sweeney, 52–66. London: R. Hart-Davis, 1956.

Liedtke, Walter. “Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals.” In Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat., Ben Broos et al., 14–59. The Hague: Mauritshuis, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1990–91.

Liedtke, Walter. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2 vols. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.

Liedtke, Walter. “Frans Hals Style and Substance.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Summer 2011).

Liedtke, Walter. “The Classic Work on Frans Hals, Even Better.” Art Newspaper (May 2015): 67, 75.

Masterpieces of Art: W. R. Valentiner Memorial Exhibition. Exh. cat. Compiled by James B. Byrnes. Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959.

Moes, E. W. Frans Hals: Sa vie et son oeuvre. Brussels: G. van Oest, 1909.

Quodbach, Esmée, ed. Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals. Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America. New York: The Frick Collection/University Park: Penn State University Press, 2014.

Slive, Seymour, et al. Frans Hals. Exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art; London: Royal Academy of Arts; and Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum; in association with Prestel Verlag, 1989–90.

Slive, Seymour. Frans Hals. 3 vols. London: Phaidon, 1970–74.

Slive, Seymour, Frans Hals. Rev. ed. London and NewYork: Phaidon, 2014.

Sterne, Margaret. The Passionate Eye: The Life of William R. Valentiner. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980.

Stott, Annette. Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Books, 1998.

Valentiner, W. R. Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Old Dutch Masters/Hudson Fulton Exhibition. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,, 1909.

Valentiner, W. R. Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 318 Abbildungen. Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben 28. Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1921.

Valentiner, W. R. Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 322 Abbildungen. 2nd ed. Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben 28. Stuttgart, Berlin, and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1923.

Valentiner, W. R. Rembrandt Paintings in America. New York: S. W. Frankel, 1931.

Valentiner, W. R. Frans Hals Paintings in America. Westport, Conn.: F. F. Sherman, 1936.

Weller, Dennis P. “The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition of 1909 and Its Legacy.” Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America 1609–2009, edited by Joyce D. Goodfriend et al., 237–65. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008.

Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1995.

Yerkes, Charles T. Catalogue of the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes. Chicago, 1893.

Yerkes, Charles T. Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes, esq., New York. 2 vols. Boston, 1904.

List of Illustrations

Frans Hals,  Merrymakers at Shrovetide,  ca. 1616–17,  New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 1 Frans Hals, Merrymakers at Shrovetide, ca. 1616–17, oil on canvas, 131.4 x 99.7 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913, inv. 14.40.605 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Woman, 1635,  New York, The Frick Collection
Fig. 2 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Woman, 1635, oil on canvas, 116.5 x 93.3 cm. New York, The Frick Collection, Henry Clay Frick Bequest, 1910, inv. 1910.1.72 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Style of Frans Hals,  Malle Babbe,  ca. 1640s,  New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 3 Style of Frans Hals, Malle Babbe, ca. 1640s, oil on canvas, 74.9 x 61 cm. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, 1871, inv. 71.76 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Fisher Girl,  ca. 1630–32,  Private collection (formerly Brooklyn Art Museum, New York)
Fig. 4 Frans Hals, Fisher Girl, ca. 1630–32, oil on canvas, 80.6 x 66.7 cm. Private collection (formerly Brooklyn Art Museum, New York) (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Willem Coymans, 1645,  Washington D. C., National Gallery of Art
Fig. 5 Frans Hals, Willem Coymans, 1645, oil on canvas, 77 x 64 cm. Washington D. C., National Gallery of Art, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937, inv. 1937.1.69 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Family Group in a Landscape,  ca. 1648,  Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Fig. 6 Frans Hals, Family Group in a Landscape, ca. 1648, oil on canvas, 202 x 285 cm. Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, inv. 179 (1934.8)  (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]
Frans Hals,  Portrait of a Man,  ca. 1660–66,  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts
Fig. 7 Frans Hals, Portrait of a Man, ca. 1660–66, oil on canvas, 85.8 x 66.9 cm. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Mrs. Antonie Lilienfeld in Memory of Dr. Leon Lilienfeld, 1966, inv. 66.1054 (artwork in the public domain) [side-by-side viewer]

Footnotes

  1. 1. This assertion is in large part proven by the sheer number of pictures assigned to the two painters that entered America during this period. A case in point are the two volumes authored by Valentiner, in 1931 and 1936 respectively, that showcased the number of Rembrandts (175) and Halses (105) that he accepted. Although Valentiner’s connoisseurship must be questioned, and the actual number of autograph works far fewer, the relative numbers still speak to the popularity of these artists among American collectors.

  2. 2. Hals was rehabilitated from near obscurity by the Realists and Impressionists, largely due to his remarkable brushwork. See Frances S. Jowell in Frans Hals, exh. cat., Seymour Slive et al. (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art; London: Royal Academy of Arts; and Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum; in association with Prestel Verlag, 1989–90), 61–86.

  3. 3. Since the nineteenth century, scholars have arrived at differing opinions regarding the number of Hals’s extant paintings. Although connoisseurship is not central to the discussion here, it is worth noting that American collectors likely acquired a greater number of paintings misattributed to Hals than their European counterparts, due to market demand.

  4. 4. Walter Liedtke “Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals,” in Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat., Ben Broos et al. (The Hague: Mauritshuis, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1990–91), 14–59.

  5. 5. For a discussion of Hals and modernity, see Christopher D. M. Atkins, The Signature Style of Frans Hals: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), esp. 195–237.

  6. 6. For a discussion of painters influenced by Dutch artists active during the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, as well as an overview of the early collecting of Dutch old masters by American collectors, see Annette Stott, Holland Mania:The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture (Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Books, 1998), 19–42.

  7. 7. For a recent overview of this phenomenon, consult the essays found in Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals, ed. Esmée Quodbach, Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America (New York: The Frick Collection/University Park: Penn State University Press, 2014). 

  8. 8. Discussions and color illustrations of these pictures and others by Hals given to the MMA appear in Liedtke’s catalogue of the museum’s Dutch paintings: Walter Liedtke, Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2 vols. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), 250–304.

  9. 9. Before they were dispersed at auction, these paintings appeared in catalogues published by Yerkes: Charles T. Yerkes, Catalogue of the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes(Chicago, 1893) and Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes, esq., New York, 2 vols. (Boston, 1904).

  10. 10. See Liedtke, Dutch Paintings (2007).

  11. 11. For the sake of brevity while considering the large number of paintings mentioned, readers are asked to consult Seymour Slive, Frans Hals, 3 vols. (London: Phaidon, 1970–74; 2nd ed., 2014, for color plates) to link the names of collectors and/or locations with the paintings cited. One can also find information on museum websites, collection catalogues, and especially Wikipedia’s web page “Paintings by Frans Hals.”

  12. 12. Bode (Studien zur Geschichte der Holländischen Malerei [Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1883], 80–92) listed 155 paintings by Hals.

  13. 13. Equally surprising, another cataloguer, Gerald S. Davies, Frans Hals (London: G. Bell 1908), listed only eight pictures by Hals in America in his book on the artist.

  14. 14. W. R. Valentiner, Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Old Dutch Masters/Hudson Fulton Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1909). For a discussion of Valentiner, the exhibition, and its legacy, see Dennis P. Weller, “The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition of 1909 and Its Legacy,” Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America 1609–2009, ed. Joyce D. Goodfriend et al. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 237–65. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004163683.i-367.31

  15. 15. For a book-length biography of Valentiner, see Margaret Sterne, The Passionate Eye: The Life of William R. Valentiner (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980).

  16. 16. The Raleigh catalogue also contained a list of Valentiner’s publications, including those cited here. It should be noted that many of the Hals paintings shown in this exhibition and others often represented new arrivals to America, many of which Valentiner had vetted for dealers and collectors. See Masterpieces of Art: W. R. Valentiner Memorial Exhibition, exh. cat., comp. James B. Byrnes (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959).

  17. 17. W. R. Valentiner, Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 318 Abbildungen, Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben 28 (Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1921); Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 322 Abbildungen, 2nd ed. (1923).

  18. 18. For a listing of these publications, see Masterpieces of Art, 306. They can also be found in Liedtke, Dutch Paintings, 2 vols. (2007), 1053–4.

  19. 19. Rather than reflecting the history of Frans Hals collecting in America, this volume served largely as a snapshot of the pictures that were in North America by 1936.

  20. 20. Wilhelm von Bode and Moritz Julius Binder provided an interim report of the shift of Hals’s paintings to America in their catalogue on the artist: Frans Hals: His Life and Work,trans. M. Brockwell (Berlin: Photographische Gesellschaft, 1914). This two-volume work included fifty-six paintings in American collections, a number that surpassed Hofstede de Groot’s accounting of forty-three in 1910 (Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, trans. and ed. Edward G. Hawke, 8 vols. [London: Macmillan and Co., 1908–27]). For Hals, see vol. 3 (1910).

  21. 21. See Slive, Frans Hals (1970–74).

  22. 22. The two paintings were formerly owned by the Mogmar Art Foundation, New York, and by John R. Thompson Jr., Chicago, respectively.

  23. 23. The Brooklyn painting has long remained on the art market in New York, an example of questionable judgment in deaccessioning. The other two pictures were less controversial, in that the Toledo work is no longer accepted as by Hals, and only Slive (2014) continued to support the Corcoran attribution. Toledo, in fact, recently acquired a major painting by Hals; and the Corcoran deaccessioned its picture in 2013.

  24. 24. In addition to Valentiner’s 1936 publication, see his Klassiker der Kunst volumes from 1921 and 1923.

  25. 25. Henry James, “The Metropolitan Museum’s 1871 Purchase,” first published Atlantic Monthly, June 1872. Reprinted in The Painter’s Eye: Notes and Essays on the Pictorial Arts by Henry James, ed. John L. Sweeney (London: R. Hart Davis, 1956), 52–56.

  26. 26. See Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue (Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1996), 65–90.

  27. 27. Slive, Frans Hals (1970–74).

  28. 28. Slive et al., Frans Hals (1989–90). This volume includes an extensive bibliography, including Slive’s other contributions devoted to Hals.

  29. 29. Slive, Frans Hals (1970–74). One also needs to mention the greatly reduced oeuvre catalogue published by the German scholar Claus Grimm in 1990, which was based on his 1972 study of Hals: Claus Grimm, Frans Hals: Entwicklung, Werkanalyse, Gesamtkatalog (Berlin: Mann, 1972) and Claus Grimm, Frans Hals: The Complete Work, trans. Jürgen Riehle (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990).

  30. 30. Interestingly, pendants for the paintings in San Diego and St. Louis can be found in Detroit and Kansas City. University museums also shared in the riches; e.g., the Portrait of Cornelis Guldewagen came as a gift to the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1953.

  31. 31. Private collectors include Thomas Kaplan in New York (The Leiden Gallery); Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo, Boston; and the owners of the Ivor Collection. The diamond-shaped Singing Girl and Boy with a Violin in the Ivor Collection cast light on the journey some of these paintings have taken. Prior to arriving at their current home, they were owned by Yerkes, another New Yorker, Chicagoan R. F. Angell, and a Montreal collector.

  32. 32. Grimm, Frans Hals (1990); see his concordance with Slive’s findings on pp. 291–92.

  33. 33. A number of portraits by Hals’s son Jan can be found in American collections. The one in Raleigh, Portrait of a Gentleman of 1644, previously carried an altered Frans Hals monogram.

  34. 34. Walter Liedtke, “The Classic Work on Frans Hals, Even Better,” Art Newspaper (May 2015): 67, 75.

  35. 35. Liedtke, Dutch Paintings (2007).

  36. 36. Walter Liedtke, “Frans Hals Style and Substance,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Summer 2011).

Bibliography

Atkins, Christopher D. M. The Signature Style of Frans Hals: Painting, Subjectivity, and the Market in Early Modernity. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012.

Bode, Wilhelm von. Studien zur Geschichte der Holländischen Malerei. Braunschweig: F. Vieweg, 1883.

Bode, Wilhelm von, and Moritz Julius Binder. Frans Hals: His Life and Work. Translated by M. W. Brockwell. 2 vols. Berlin: Photographische Gesellschaft, 1914.

Davies, Gerald S. Frans Hals. 1st ed., 1904. London: G. Bell, 1908.

Grimm, Claus. Frans Hals: Entwicklung, Werkanalyse, Gesamtkatalog. Berlin: Mann, 1972.

Grimm, Claus. Frans Hals: The Complete Work. Translated by Jürgen Riehle. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990.

Hofstede de Groot, Cornelis. A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. Translated and edited by Edward G. Hawke. 8 vols. London: Macmillan and Co., 1908–27.

James, Henry. “The Metropolitan Museum’s 1871 Purchase.” First published Atlantic Monthly, June 1872. Reprinted in The Painter’s Eye: Notes and Essays on the Pictorial Arts by Henry James, edited by John L. Sweeney, 52–66. London: R. Hart-Davis, 1956.

Liedtke, Walter. “Dutch Paintings in America: The Collectors and Their Ideals.” In Great Dutch Paintings from America, exh. cat., Ben Broos et al., 14–59. The Hague: Mauritshuis, and Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1990–91.

Liedtke, Walter. Dutch Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2 vols. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007.

Liedtke, Walter. “Frans Hals Style and Substance.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Summer 2011).

Liedtke, Walter. “The Classic Work on Frans Hals, Even Better.” Art Newspaper (May 2015): 67, 75.

Masterpieces of Art: W. R. Valentiner Memorial Exhibition. Exh. cat. Compiled by James B. Byrnes. Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 1959.

Moes, E. W. Frans Hals: Sa vie et son oeuvre. Brussels: G. van Oest, 1909.

Quodbach, Esmée, ed. Holland’s Golden Age in America: Collecting the Art of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals. Frick Collection Studies in the History of Art Collecting in America. New York: The Frick Collection/University Park: Penn State University Press, 2014.

Slive, Seymour, et al. Frans Hals. Exh. cat. Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art; London: Royal Academy of Arts; and Haarlem: Frans Hals Museum; in association with Prestel Verlag, 1989–90.

Slive, Seymour. Frans Hals. 3 vols. London: Phaidon, 1970–74.

Slive, Seymour, Frans Hals. Rev. ed. London and NewYork: Phaidon, 2014.

Sterne, Margaret. The Passionate Eye: The Life of William R. Valentiner. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1980.

Stott, Annette. Holland Mania: The Unknown Dutch Period in American Art and Culture. Woodstock, N.Y.: Overlook Books, 1998.

Valentiner, W. R. Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Old Dutch Masters/Hudson Fulton Exhibition. Exh. cat. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art,, 1909.

Valentiner, W. R. Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 318 Abbildungen. Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben 28. Stuttgart and Berlin: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1921.

Valentiner, W. R. Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde in 322 Abbildungen. 2nd ed. Klassiker der Kunst in Gesamtausgaben 28. Stuttgart, Berlin, and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1923.

Valentiner, W. R. Rembrandt Paintings in America. New York: S. W. Frankel, 1931.

Valentiner, W. R. Frans Hals Paintings in America. Westport, Conn.: F. F. Sherman, 1936.

Weller, Dennis P. “The Hudson-Fulton Exhibition of 1909 and Its Legacy.” Going Dutch: The Dutch Presence in America 1609–2009, edited by Joyce D. Goodfriend et al., 237–65. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008.

Wheelock, Arthur K., Jr. Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C.: The National Gallery of Art, 1995.

Yerkes, Charles T. Catalogue of the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes. Chicago, 1893.

Yerkes, Charles T. Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture in the Collection of Charles T. Yerkes, esq., New York. 2 vols. Boston, 1904.

Imprint

Review: Peer Review (Double Blind)
DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.5
License:
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation:
Dennis P. Weller, "Frans Hals in America: Another Embarrassment of Riches," Journal of Historians of Netherlandish Art 9:1 (Winter 2017) DOI: 10.5092/jhna.2017.9.1.5