Fran Hals
Isaac Abrahamsz Massa c. 1635 Oil on panel, 20.3 cm x 18.6 cm,
collection San Diego Museum of Art
A Question of Modernity in Contemporary
Portraiture: Hals and the Price of Ambition
After viewing recent online portrait
art competitions—particularly those held in Australia—I faced a
fundamental question: Why do we still hold portrait painting prizes when we are
already blessed with so many extraordinary, enduring historical portraits?
The answer to this question was powerfully reinforced during a recent visit to the Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art, where I braved the tourist throngs to see a selection of high-quality international artworks from the San Diego Museum of Art. The sheer quality and mastery of paintings on display only highlighted the general sense that artworks winning major contemporary art prizes often fall short of that quality. While I am not necessarily opposed to the existence of such prizes, acknowledging that artists need to earn a living, the level of painterly sensability within the paint traces in some of the sighted winning artworks appear not to contain the impact of Hals.
For example, in viewing a small portrait by Frans Hals of the merchant Isaac Abrahamsz Massa (c. 1635), I was immediately struck by its overwhelming ambience of modernity resonating from the paint traces on the canvas despite Hals's painting being nearly 390 years old. The brushwork—the visible paint traces—feels so fresh, so immediate, as if the conversation with Massa were happening right now as he painted it. How does that sensation travel across the centuries? It remains astonishing how Hals achieved an image that feels utterly timeless and modern across such a sustained length of space and time.
Hals’s painterly ability achieved these senastations of modernity through studio praxis, specifically by the way he quickly and persuasively applies the paint, revealing an outstanding sensibility that fundamentally rejects the traditional, painstaking methods of his time. His confident, almost radical technique is clear in the rendering of Massa’s clothing, where the textures, hues, and tones are vibrant and alive, mirroring the sitter's energy. This transcends mere detailed illustration; it is a form of immediate, intuitive painting—a pure "eye-to-hand" transmission that seems to bypass the brain in its immediacy, pushing into uncharted aesthetic territory.
As the historian Theodorus Schrevelius noted, Hals’s portraits possessed a “vitality” that reflected “such power and life” that he “seems to challenge nature with his brush.” Hals employed this unique system of painting, all his own, surpassing almost everyone. He imbued his work with an ambience of modernity that propelled it far beyond the aesthetic conventions of his epoch thus giving it an enduring life.
Hals’s innovative portrait of Massa has
traveled through four centuries, its modern presence powerfully exhibiting
itself still today. Compared to the winning pieces I’ve encountered in recent
Australian portrait prizes, this small-scale painting carries significantly
more visual impact than much of Australian portrait painting produced so far this centuary.
Seeing many contemporary portrait works makes me question the true artistic ambition of the artists competing today. My hope is that their aim is something akin to Hals's—to push boundaries, capture life, and create something timeless. If their aspiration falls short of this pursuit of new aesthetic horizons, if their goal is merely competency rather than mastery with an innovative system of painting, then their artistic journey is likely to be a very short one indeed.
This leads to another fundamental question: What is the goal of portraiture if not to reach for that immediacy and enduring modernity that Frans Hals mastered centuries ago?
All
quotes from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_Hals
