Museum acquires painting by Hals dating to about 1624
The Toledo Museum of Art will be adding a major new Dutch Master to the walls of its Great Gallery.
Museum officials on Tuesday announced it had purchased "Family Portrait in a Landscape," by the
17th century master Franz Hals.
Officials did not say how much it paid for the work. The purchase was made from private bequests
dedicated to the purchase of new art.
This is the first work by Hals the museum has, and completes its representation of the trilogy of great
Dutch portrait painters that include Rembrant and Johannes Vermeer.
Dr. Lawrence Nichols, a senior curator at the museum, was central to the purchase. Nichols at a press
conference Tuesday explained that he was in a private art dealer’s gallery trying to arrange the loan of
a painting by Edouard Mamet for the museum’s forthcoming major exhibition when he looked across the room
and spotted the Hals.
Knowing that the Toledo Museum was desirous of acquiring a painting by Hals, he immediately contacted new
museum director Brian Kennedy, who had been appointed but had not started working at the museum.
The negotiations began and the acquisition was completed. The painting was unveiled Tuesday, but will go
on public display on Oct. 13 following a 6 p.m. lecture by Pieter Biesboer, curator emeritus of the
Frans Hals Museum in the Netherlands.
Kennedy said that for decades the museum has been seeking "a great, not good" work by Hals.
That’s what it has in "Family Portrait in a Landscape," he said.
Nichols called the purchase "a collection changer."
A half century ago the museum had a painting it believed to be by Hals, "The Flute Player," but
Nichols explained that once a "bogus" signature was removed, it was determined the work was
painted by a follower of Hals, and was taken off exhibition.
When he spotted the family portrait he became – as he said he told Kennedy in an email at the time –
"maniacally preoccupied" with its possible acquisition.
He said that Hals’ work is marked by bold brush strokes and a command of color. Van Gogh, he said,
speculated that Hals had "27 different blacks" at his command.
But what really sets the work apart, Nichols said, was the way Hals "animates" his subjects. He
said a contemporary of the painter noted: "His portraits seem to lack nothing but life
itself."
The painting, dating from about 1624, is the earliest of the painter’s four surviving family portraits,
and the last that was in private hands.
The family of Lord Boyne had owned the work since the 19th century, Kennedy explained. It had been on
extended loan to the National Museum in Wales.
The painting, of the family of a cloth merchant, has two oddities. First the figure of another child was
added to the canvas in 1628 – the date is on the baby’s shoe – by another artist. And the canvas is
actually the larger of two parts of the original.
The right side of the original was cut off and is now on display at a Brussels museum as "Three
Children and a Goat Cart." That painting depicts three children and a goat cart. Museum officials
hope to arrange an exhibit uniting the two paintings at some future date.
