Franz Hals portraits - Lawrence W Nichols

Frans Hals (1582/83 - 1666) is one of the foremost
portrait painters of the Dutch Golden Age. This
exhibition is the first devoted to his family group
portraiture. The show and the catalogue will unite
all of his four family portraits along with related
w orks by the artist and will examine the topic of
Hals's family portraiture as a whole, placing it in the
context of his complete oeuvre.


The exhibition was prompted by the Toledo
Museum of Art's acquisition in 2011 of Frans Hals's
Van Campen Family Portra it in a Landscape, as well
as the recent conservation of Brussels' Three
Children of the Van Campen Family. These two
works originally formed one composition, separated
for unknown reasons likely in the late 18th century
or early 19th century. The catalogu e reunites the
surviving sections of the Toledo/Brussels painting
and proposes a reconstruction. It will discuss how
the four compositions are constructed, what
symbolic elements are included, and what we know
about the sitters. It also presents new discov eries
about the Van Campen family, placing them in
Haarlem society of the early 1600s.