Today, October 17, 2024, the Berlin Gemäldegalerie welcomed the 100,000th visitor to the exhibition “Frans Hals. Master of the Moment” were welcomed. Due to the continued popularity of the exhibition, opening hours will be extended from Friday, November 1 to Sunday, November 3, 2024 from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. for the grand exhibition finale. Berlin celebrates one of the greatest portrait painters of all time: Like Rembrandt and Vermeer, Frans Hals is one of the outstanding Dutch painters of the 17th century. In addition to unconventional, expressive portraits, he was the first Dutch artist to paint outsiders from society as life-size individuals. His rediscovery in the 19th century shaped the development of modern painting. In cooperation with the National Gallery, London, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Gemäldegalerie is organizing a comprehensive exhibition of around 80 works by Hals and his contemporaries – the first survey exhibition in Germany dedicated to Frans Hals.
Image above: Frans Hals, Porträt eines Paares, vermutlich Isaac Abrahamsz Massa und Beatrix van der Laen, um 1622, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Today, October 17, 2024, Dagmar Hirschfelder, Director of the Gemäldegalerie, and Katja Kleinert, curator of the exhibition, welcomed the 100,000th visitor to the exhibition “Frans Hals. Master of the Moment”. Ekaterina Grigoreva and Konstantin Belov from Berlin were welcomed with a bouquet of flowers and the exhibition catalog and were given an individual tour of the exhibition.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / David von Becker
Frans Hals (1582/84-1666) is one of the most important portraitists in European art history. In addition to large-format portraits of archers and regents, he produced numerous individual portraits of the Dutch bourgeoisie in Haarlem, where he spent his entire life. Hals’ works are characterized by their bold brushstrokes, unusual liveliness and apt characterization. With nine works, the Berlin Gemäldegalerie has one of the most extensive and high-caliber collections of paintings by Frans Hals in the world, including highlights such as the “Malle Babbe”, the “Portrait of Catharina Hooft with her Nurse” and the “Boy with Flute”.
Among the 80 or so works in the exhibition are around 50 of Frans Hals’ most important paintings from over 30 public and private collections in Europe, the USA and Canada. These include the top pieces “Portrait of a Married Couple” from the Rijksmuseum, “Young Man with Skull” from the National Gallery in London and “The Lute Player” from the Musée du Louvre. Works that have never been exhibited in Germany before will also be on display, including the monumental, over four-metre-wide marksman piece “The Lean Company”, “The Laughing Cavalier” from the Wallace Collection in London and two extraordinary paintings depicting evangelists from the Museum of Western and Eastern Art in Odesa.
Palais (Musée du Louvre) / Franck Raux
In addition to the top pieces by Frans Hals, the special exhibition also presents works by his environment, his competitors in Haarlem and his workshop. In this way, Hals is located in Berlin as an exceptional figure in the context of his time and becomes more tangible both as an artist and as a teacher. His students andcolleagues include Adriaen Brouwer, Adriaen van Ostade and Judith Leyster, who can be considered one of the most important female artists in the Netherlands. The inclusion of works by the studentsmakes it clear that Hals encouraged their individual talents and specialization in different fields.
“Hals uses an unprecedentedly free painting style for his portraits and genre paintings, which makes him probably the most modern artist of his time,” says Katja Kleinert, curator of the exhibition. Instead of conventional poses, Hals captures the fleeting moment of a movement or expression. His masterly illusionistic painting style makes his subjects appear lively, open and approachable. The painter devotes himself to their individual characteristics with impartiality, curiosity, humor and sympathy. Laughter or smiles are a key element here: he has an unsurpassed ability to depict laughing figures realistically. He paints social outsiders just as devotedly as the bourgeois upper class. With his innovative genre paintings and life-size character studies, he gave hitherto unknown visibility to marginalized groups of society that had no place in contemporary portraiture.
Gemäldegalerie / Christoph Schmidt
Hals can be considered a pioneer of modernism not only in this respect, but also due to his virtuoso application of paint and the spontaneity and immediacy of his depictions. At the end of the 19th century, Realists and Impressionists such as Max Liebermann, Wilhelm Leibl and Lovis Corinth were inspired by his paintings and used them as a source of inspiration. In Berlin, works by these artists are therefore shown in the context of their great role model. This not only highlights the specific quality of Hals’ works, but also their far-reaching impact on the development of European painting.
Collection, London, UK
“After the exhibition was seen by around 400,000 enthusiastic visitors in London and Amsterdam, we are very much looking forward to showing it in an expanded form in Berlin. This is the very first time that Frans Hals has been the subject of a comprehensive exhibition in Germany,” says Dagmar Hirschfelder, Director of the Gemäldegalerie.
“Frans Hals. Master of the Moment” is curated by Katja Kleinert, curator for Dutch and Flemish art of the 17th century, and Erik Eising, research assistant at the Gemäldegalerie. It is supported by the Fontana Foundation, the Kuratorium Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Kaiser Friedrich Museumsverein, the Ernst von Siemens Kunststiftung and the Heinz Kuckei Collections Berlin Foundation. Media cooperations: ARTE, Der Tagesspiegel, Die Zeit Weltkunst, Klassik Radio, Monopol, tipBerlin.
The show, which runs until Sunday, November 3, 2024, is one of the Gemäldegalerie’s most successful exhibitions. Dagmar Hirschfelder: “We are particularly pleased with the enthusiastic reactions of our visitors, who often say that they feel directly addressed by Hals’ paintings. The positive response from the press, which has praised the exhibition as refreshing and innovative, has also been great.” Alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer, Frans Hals (1582/83-1666) is one of the outstanding Dutch painters of the 17th century and is regarded as one of the most important portrait painters in European art.
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin / David von Becker
The show is a cooperation project with the National Gallery in London and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, but the exhibition organizers in Berlin have developed their very own concept. Curator Katja Kleinert: “In order to illustrate the uniqueness of Frans Hals, we are also showing works by his contemporaries, competitors, pupils and successors. Because Hals’ exceptional talent only becomes particularly clear in comparison. This also applies to the juxtaposition with works by modernist painters such as Corinth, Leibl and Liebermann, for whom Hals’ oeuvre was an important source of inspiration.” The exhibition comprises around 75 works in total, including around 50 paintings by Frans Hals, including top-class loans from the Netherlands, France, Great Britain, the USA and Canada.
Due to its great success, the Gemäldegalerie is extending its opening hours on the last weekend of the exhibition: From November 1 to 3, the exhibition will be open from 10 am to 10 pm. The exhibition catalog is available in the store on site at the museum price of €39.
WHEN?
Exhibition period: 12. July until 3. November 2024
Opening hours: 10 am until 6 pm
Exhibition finale: 1. until 3. November 2024, 10 am to 10 pm
WHERE?
Gemäldegalerie
Matthäikirchplatz
10785 Berlin
COSTS?
Regular: 16 EUR
Reduced: 8 EUR
