Dirck Hals

DIRCK HALS 1591 - Haarlem – 1656 Dirck Hals was a painter and draughtsman of genre scenes with small-scale figures, particularly merry companies in interiors and bucolic landscapes. Dirck, the younger brother of Frans Hals (c.1582/3-1666), was born in Haarlem in 1591. His father Franchoys Hals, a clothworker originally from Mechelen, and his wife Adriaentgen van Geertenrijck had emigrated from Antwerp some time after 1585 to escape the brutal regime of the Duke of Parma. According to Houbraken, Dirck studied with his brother Frans. From 1618 to 1626, and again in 1640, he was a member of De Wijngaertranken, the rhetoricians’ chamber to which Frans also belonged. He was a member of the guild of St Luke in Haarlem from 1627 until his death. Dirck and his wife Agnietje Jans had seven children, including the painter Antonius Hals (b.1621). Dirck is recorded in Leiden in 1641-2 and again in 1648-9; he may have spent some of the intervening years there. He died in Haarlem in 1656. In his Beschrijvinge ende lof der Stad Haerlem (1628), Samuel Ampzing praised Dirck Hals for his ‘neat little figures’. Most of his paintings are signed and dated between 1619 and 1654. He collaborated with the architectural painter Bartholomeus van Bassen (c.1590-1652), providing the figure groups for lavish perspective interiors. The work of Dirck Hals is represented in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem; the Gemäldegalerie der Akademie der bildenden Kunste, Vienna; the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; the Hermitage, St Petersburg; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Landesmuseum, Mainz; the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam and the Mauritshuis, The Hague.