Thinking through a body of work: Van Gogh’s turn to Frans Hals

Summary Vincent van Gogh self-consciously developed his personal style of painting in close dialogue with the art of Frans Hals (1582/1583–1666) and then current interpretations of Hals’ recently rediscovered art. This article examines the ways Van Gogh studied Hals and to what ends he implemented Halsian approaches to painting in his own work. Most immediately, this article explores how central Hals was to Van Gogh’s interest in and approach to portraiture. Van Gogh’s focus on Hals’ dynamic brushwork and bold colouring is also considered. From his well-documented life and his own correspondence to friends and relatives, it is possible to identify what paintings by Hals he saw. Van Gogh was also aware of his works from William Unger’s reproductive print series that was published in 1873. In total, Van Gogh had familiarity with Hals’ early, middle, and late works from all genres in which he worked. What Van Gogh thought about Hals’ works and Hals himself was shaped, in part, by recent writings on the seventeenth-century painter. Most notably, Van Gogh read the publications of Thoré-Burger and other French authors, such as Eugène Fromentin, who frequently cast Hals as a colourist and republican – two loaded terms in late nineteenth-century French discourse. This article explores how Van Gogh turned to the example of Hals especially in his time living abroad, in Belgium and France, and considers how emulating his countryman offered a means to craft a distinct image of himself, especially in France, and to align himself with artistic and political ideals attached to Hals in French discourse. Finally, it examines how Van Gogh engaged not only with individual paintings by Hals, but also with the artist’s oeuvre as a whole. More specifically, it analyses how a renewed interest in Hals – that occurred in the form of monographic studies – offered Van Gogh the inspiration to consider a body of work, Hals’ and his own, rather than just emulating individual works.