This year, the Frans Hals Museum is a hundred years old and is celebrating its centenary with an exhibition of major works by Frans Hals and other renowned contemporary artists, including Titian, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Jordaens and Rubens. The exhibition re-frames within a richer context Frans Hals’s virtuosity with a paintbrush and his lesser-known skills in representing his subjects. The exhibition thus throws fresh light on Hals’s ambitions and his place as an artist during the 17th century, a period during which the development of a personal style and getting the better of one’s colleagues became an end in itself.

A lively selection of high quality genre paintings by Hals representing laughing characters are shown alongside comparable canvases by Van Baburen, Jordaens and Van Dyck. The Joueur de cornemuse (The Bagpiper) by Jacob Jordaens, acquired in 2009 by the Léon-Courtin – Marcelle Bouché Fund, managed by the King Baudouin Foundation, lends itself particularly well to be compared with Frans Hals’s half-figure musician portraits. Not only is the presence of the work in this exhibition well-founded, it also encourages us to take a new look at this presumed self-portrait by Jordaens.
‘Frans Hals. Oog in oog met Rembrandt, Rubens en Titiaan’.

Until 28 July 2013
Frans Hals Museum, Groot Heiligland 62, 2011 ES Haarlem, the Netherlands