In the Company of Frans and Vincent,

 Since I began paying attention to paintings, stimulated by my aunt who offered me art books for Xmas, I took a liking to the Flemish masters.  I was impressed by their color-photo-precision quality and the balance between cheerful realism and mythical symbolism. 

One painter in particular fascinated me: Johannes Vermeer. His canvas inspired meditation.  His serene female sitters, and the purity of light of his city and interior scenes were very distinctive from those produced by other Flemish painters.  For me Vermeer’s painting style was fresh and a world apart from that of the period.  The Girl with a Pearl Earring (c.1665) was my most beloved painting.  The beauty and mystery of the girl had an overpowering effect on me.  The painting was lost for 200 years but reappeared in 1902 when it was purchased for a few guilders.  Tracy Chevalier gave flesh to The Girl, the historical novel captivated me and started the craze.

But when my curiosity in painting became more mature, I fell for the swagger of Frans Hals’ laidback but self-confident male sitters, whose joie de vivre I found invigorating.  I visited the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem where he lived most of his life.  Last year, I missed the blockbuster Vermeer exhibit at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; this year, I could not let pass Frans Hals, also at the Rijks.  Hals married twice and had 14 kids.  He died old (86), penniless and criticized for his laziness; nonetheless, he left more than 200 known canvases.  Possibly more, if one takes into account that many large group portraits were cut up and sold into separate pieces.  On the other hand, there are so few known Vermeer paintings (about 30), that rarity adds to his legend.

Hals’ rough but expressive brush stokes were so avant garde that Claude Manet could have been his tavern buddy!  Hals captured the true expression of men, women, children, babies, couples, families and local grandees.  He painted many sitters with smile on their face, baring their teeth.  He also painted children as children, not as miniature adults like his peers.  No other Flemish portrait painter dared! Hals painted female faces with a smoother brush stroke than those of male sitters.  During the 17^th century, Hals was not considered a celebrity painter like Rembrandt, his rough style went soon out of fashion and he was forgotten until the end of the 19^th century.  Vincent Van Gogh, one of his great admirers wrote “What a joy it is to see Frans Hals like that - how very different it is from the paintings…where everything has been carefully smoothed out in the same way”.  Today, many art experts give him the bronze medal of the Dutch Golden Age.  For me, Hals deserve the silver medal and I am glad that he did not suffer the ignominy of having a toothpaste name after him.  I never cared much for neither Rembrandt nor the toothpaste.

The Rijks’ exhibit invited the visitors to share the life of the sitters.  I discovered who was the young man on my favorite portrait.  Willem Coymans was an eligible bachelor and fashion victim.  He adopted the colorful, over the top French fashions.  Bachelors were less bound by the strict bourgeois dress code.  Married men donned black outfits, legacy of the stern Spanish dress code.  Women had more freedom.  The museum managed to reunite some pair portraits of husbands and wives which had been separated during successive sales.  In the large group portraits, Hals only painted the important sitters and a lesser talented painter filled the rest of the canvas.  My best argument to like Hals: he influenced the Impressionists.

My second cultural visit was to another paradise for art lovers: The Kröller-Müller Museum.  The building is nested in the Hoge Veluwe National Park at about one hour drive from Amsterdam.  In addition to its impressive collections of Vincent Van Gogh paintings (some 90, plus 180 drawings), of Impressionists and Modernists, the museum prides itself on its sculpture garden.  More than 200 works by modern artists are dispersed on a 25 hectares area (75 acres).  The museum is the brainchild of German heiress Helene Müller who married a Dutch citizen, Anton Kröller.  Between 1907 and 1922 she bought almost 11,500 artworks.  Hers is one of the largest private collections of the 20^th century.  Additional works were purchased by the state of the Netherland which received the Kröller-Müller collections as a donation in 1935. 

I was keen to see for myself Vincent’s painting Café Terrasse at Night painted when he was in Arles (1888-89).  The painting is genuine but the café on Place du Forum is a fake, a rip-off and a tourist trap!  The brasserie is now closed for tax evasion and its owners/con-artists are felons.  The Café’s original location was bombed during WW2, only a plaque indicates the spot.

During the mid-20^th century, it was not plain sailing for the KM museum: adultery, bankruptcy, Nazi looting, Nazi collaborator, art forger, hospital and Canadian army camp.  All to discover in my next blog, along with an update on the Café Terrasse’s future.