Frans Hals in America: Collectors, Scholars, and Connoisseurs

This book expands and updates W. R. Valentiner’s informative, yet flawed, Frans Hals Paintings in America from 1936. An important contribution to the history of collecting in America, it provides readers with a detailed understanding of Hals in America today. The book discusses topics such as the thorny issue of Hals attributions, the impact of a dynamic art market over several generations, and more than a century of scholarly research and debate. Frans Hals represents one of the most gifted and innovative masters associated with the genius of Dutch seventeenth-century art. During his remarkable career he excelled as a painter of portraits―both individual and group―and half-length genre figures. Owing to his increasingly broad and vigorous paint application, Samuel Ampzing, a contemporary of Hals, was prompted to write in 1628 “How dashingly Frans [Hals] paints from life!” Frans Hals in America begins with an overview of Hals’s rediscovery by artists during the second half of the nineteenth century. Shortly thereafter, collectors on both sides of the Atlantic sought out his paintings. Here, ‘Gilded Age’ Americans led the charge. In addition to exploring in detail the narrative of Hals in America, this fully illustrated book also includes a catalogue of paintings, and a detailed bibliography.