They Came from the South

They left their troubled homeland to seek a new life in the North, refugees fleeing poverty, war and religious persecution. But unlike many modern asylum-seekers, they didn't actually travel that far, just from Flanders to Holland. And they spoke the same language, more or less. 

Their destination was Haarlem, and the thousands who arrived there from the Spanish-ruled southern Netherlands in the late 16th and early 17th centuries would change the face of the city, its art and architecture for ever. They included its most famous painter, and their legacy is highlighted in an exhibition called Newcomers at the art gallery that bears his name, the Frans Hals Museum.  

Not surprisingly, it's Hals himself who is the star turn in this exhibition that provides an intriguing lesson in art history and Dutch history. There are nine of his paintings on show here, seven of them loaned from elsewhere. This one -- Two Fisherboys -- is a picture that really makes an impression on you, probably because it's so un-Hals-like, so lacking in gradations of black. 

Hals was just a toddler when he moved from Antwerp to Haarlem in the 1580s; this painting is from the 1630s. The grinning boy is sharing his prank with us, the viewers; he no doubt hopes the crab he is dropping into the basket on the other boy's back will give him a surprise nip. This painting, newly restored and long privately owned, hasn't been back to Haarlem since before World War II. 

There are more accustomed Hals portraits on show too. Those Flemings were generally painted a little less starchily than the northern Netherlanders. There's the merchant Willem van Heythuysen, rocking back on his chair, hat at a jaunty angle. 

Lucas de Clercq and his wife Feyntje van Steenkiste were also southerners, but they were Anabaptists. They traded in potash, used for bleaching linen, a major industry, so they must have made a few guilders. We see them painted here in sombre (if gorgeous) black, with a smattering of white. No lace, though. 

The industrious incomers were helped to set up in business with generous start-up money. They brought new skills, and new products for a burgeoning market, in particular in pottery and cloth. The result was an economic boom for a rapidly growing population, which also had money to spend on art. 

Among the exhibits is this remarkably fresh-looking piece of damask linen, four centuries old, with its intricate design of fish, fishing boats, their crew and the sea god Neptune. It was made by Quirijn Damast -- the surname is the Dutch for damask -- whose family brought the technique with them when they moved from Courtrai (or Kortrijk). Damast did well for himself; he even rose to be mayor of Haarlem. 

It wasn't just in painting and manufacturing that the Flemings made their mark on the city; they changed its very appearance. In the 1570s, Haarlem was occupied by Spanish troops for four years before being devastated by a fire. Rebuilding was a priority. Enter Lieven de Key, a master builder from Ghent, who moved to Haarlem in the 1590s. 

De Key set the tone for the city's reconstruction, with his meat market, or Vleeshal, from 1603, in front of the western facade of St Bavo's church. The Vleeshal's stepped gables were soon echoed in other buildings round the main market square, which essentially looks the same today as in Gerrit Berckheyde's painting of 1696. 

At the Mauritshuis in The Hague on this trip to Holland, we saw how Rembrandt had portrayed himself as a great artist of the past, drawing on the writings of Karel van Mander. As a young man, van Mander had studied in Italy, but his family fled the southern Netherlands in 1583. Van Mander founded an art academy in Haarlem, taking centre stage in the city's art scene and propagating the classical Renaissance art of Italy. He published his immensely influential Book of Painting in 1604. Hals was probably a pupil of his.

But Van Mander's own work doesn't really do much for us. The Adoration of the Golden Calf is drawn from the museum's own collection and it's a confection of an Italian history painting and a Flemish landscape. It's in a room with a massive nude Minerva by Hendrick Goltzius and an overblown Wedding of Peleus and Thetis by Cornelis van Haarlem. Not the sort of art we go to the Netherlands to see, to be honest. 

We were more impressed by more usual Dutch subject matter, such as a tasty cheese. 

Pieter Claesz was a late arrival in Haarlem, in the 1620s. In Antwerp, he'd specialised in still lifes of richly laden tables, but in Holland, he toned things down for a more restrained Dutch palate. A piece of cheese, a glass of beer, a roll, fish, butter, spring onions. It's all about the textures, and the light, and the incredible skill in reproducing a huge range of materials and objects. Could van Mander have done that? 

And he'd perhaps have hated this one: Country Folk Playing Cards in a Tavern by Adriaen Brouwer.

Brouwer didn't spend long in Haarlem, but he was a pupil of Hals. He actually returned to Antwerp, where he died in his mid-30s in 1638. He brought the popular Flemish genre of merrymaking farming folk in country inns to the Netherlands. Here they are, those peasants, drinking and playing cards, with a pig in attendance. 

Rubens and Rembrandt bought Brouwer's work, and a Haarlem painter carried on capturing the carousing -- Adriaen van Ostade. 

Newcomers: a well-presented show about a fascinating period in history.

And while you're in the Frans Hals Museum

You'll want to see more of Hals, naturally, and more than anything else, you'll want to see Hals's Civic Guard pictures, because until September 10 next year, all six of them are hanging together in Haarlem.

In the 17th century, Civic Guard companies were maintained to keep order in Dutch cities and defend them if needed, and it became a tradition for the officers -- the elite of the city -- to immortalise themselves in a group portrait. The most famous of these is of course Rembrandt's The Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum, but Hals, the master portraitist, was an innovator in the genre, bringing new liveliness and excitement to paintings that in less skilled hands could easily become stodgy line-ups of faces and uniforms.  

Hals was so good, he even got a commission from Amsterdam to paint a Civic Guard portrait there. As if Amsterdam didn't have plenty of fine artists of its own.... But Hals got into a dispute and never actually finished the piece. 

They brought in the Amsterdam painter Pieter Codde, who normally painted in a precise style very different to Hals's, to finish it. It usually hangs in the Rijksmuseum, but at the moment it's in the same hall with Hals's five paintings of two Haarlem guard companies. So much Hals in one place; it's pretty special. 

Practicalities

Newcomers continues at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem until January 8. It's open 1100 to 1700 Tuesday to Sunday. Tickets, which include the exhibition, cost a full-price 16 euros and are bookable online here. Allow 45 to 60 minutes for this show. 

The museum is split over two locations; the exhibition and the Golden Age painting collection is located on Groot Heiligland in the south of the city centre, 15-20 minutes walk from Haarlem station; there are trains from Amsterdam Centraal every few minutes, taking 15-20 minutes, or if you're travelling from elsewhere in the Netherlands, 9292.nl is an excellent site for transport connections. There's a direct bus to Haarlem from Schiphol airport every few minutes. 

Elsewhere in Haarlem

See things the way David Hockney sees them in Hockney's Eye at the Teylers Museum, just 10 minutes walk from the Frans Hals. Find out about different perspectives and the visual tools artists have used down the centuries in an absorbing show that really makes you think.

Diary dates for Hals enthusiasts 

The National Gallery in London and the Rijksmuseum will be staging the largest Hals exhibition in more than 30 years with over 50 works, including the Haarlem Civic Guard portraits. On in London from September 30 to January 21, 2024, and then in Amsterdam from mid-February to June 9, 2024. 

Images

Frans Hals, Two Fisherboys, c. 1634-37. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp
Frans Hals, Portrait of Lucas de Clercq, 1635, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, on loan from the City of Amsterdam
Quirijn Jansz Damast, Napkin showing fish, fishing boats with fishermen and the sea god Neptune, c. 1620, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem
Gerrit Berckheyde, Grote Markt with the Great or St. Bavo's Church, 1696, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, on loan from Dutch Cultural Heritage Agency. Photo: Tom Haartsen
Karel van Mander, The Adoration of the Golden Calf, 1602, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem. Photo: René Gerritsen

Pieter Claesz, Breakfast Still Life, 1625, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, on loan from private collection
Adriaen Brouwer, Country Folk Playing Cards in a Tavern, 1624-25, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam, on loan from Bijl-Van Urk Master Paintings
Frans Hals and Pieter Codde, Militia Company of District XI under the Command of Captain Reynier Reael, Known as ‘The Meagre Company’, 1637, on loan from Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam