DIRCK HALS (Haarlem 1591 – Haarlem 1656)
Death Comes to the Party
signed with monogram in the left center DH
oil on panel
18 x 32 ¼ inches (47 x 83 cm.)
PROVENANCE
Count Andrassy, Budapest, before 1911
Count Batthyány, Budapest, before 1911
Allen Löbl, by 1911
Kleinberger Galleries, New York & Paris, 1911
Vente Importante de Tableaux Anciens, Frederick Muller & Cie,
Amsterdam, May 26 – 27, 1914, lot 316, illustrated
Private Collection, Austria
EXHIBITED
Versailles, Salle du Jeu de Paume, Exposition Grands et Petits Maîtres Hollandais du XVIIe siècle, April 28 – July 10, 1911 (lent by M. Allen Löbl)
LITERATURE
Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, “Dirck Hals”, in Provenance Index, RKD, The Hague, no. 203480
Exposition Grands et Petits Maîtres Hollandais du XVIIe siècle, Salle du Jeu de Paume, 1911, p. 12, no. 62 (as La Joyeusse Compagnie)
Catalogue of 150 Paintings by Old Masters, Kleinberger Galleries, Paris & New York, 1911, no. 26, illustrated
Britta Nehlsen-Marten, Dirck Hals 1591 – 1656, VDG, Weimar, 2003, p. 303, no. 300, p. 396, no. 189, illustrated
Dirck Hals was a painter and draughtsman of genre scenes who specialized in merry companies. He was the younger brother and possibly a pupil of Frans Hals (1582/83-1666). Their parents Franchoys Hals and Adriaentgen van Geertenrijck had moved from Antwerp to Haarlem sometime between 1585 and 1591. Like his brother Frans, he was a member of the Civic Guard of St. George in Haarlem and belonged to a society of rhetoricians known as the Wijngaertranken (The Vine Tendrils). Between 1621 and 1635 Dirck and his wife, Agnietje Jans, had seven children including the painter Antonius Hals (1621-1702). Although he lived most of his life in Haarlem, from 164l-43 and again in 1648-1649 as well as possibly the intervening years, he resided in Leiden. The most notable stylistic influences on his work were those of Willem Buytewech (1591/92-1624) and Esaias van de Velde (1590/91 - 1630). Buytewech lived in Haarlem from 1612-1617and Van de Velde from 1610 - 1618.
In a large interior an elegant group of revelers drink and dance on a bare wood-planked floor under an exposed beamed ceiling. A dog and large wine cooler are in the foreground. Servants scurry up the backstairs. Paintings are hung high, cupboards flank the walls, and a curtained bed with a peacock pie on top is visible on the left side. The vibrancy of the groups positioning and actions create a dynamic flow of movement throughout the composition underscored by the vivid coloration and reflected sheen of their clothing. So absorbed in the pleasures of the moment, no one in the company notices that death has come to the door.
Merry company scenes (geselschapjes) derive from the tradition of biblical subjects such as the Prodigal Son Feasting and Mankind Before the Flood.[1] A peacock pie is included in the illustration of a merry company with the Prodigal Son at the center raising his glass on the title page of W.D. Hooflt’s play Heden-daeghsche verlooren soon (The modern-day Prodigal Son), which was published in Amsterdam in 1630. A peacock pie traditionally symbolized the sins of hauteur, pride and voluptuousness.[2]
Descended from such imagery, Hals intent in his merry companies is typically not so much a rebuke but more a celebration and idealization of life’s joys and fleeting pleasures. In this panel the vanitas theme is fully realized by the inclusion of a skeleton holding a scythe in the doorway. Interestingly at some point in the painting’s history, the skeleton was overpainted. When Cornelis Hofstede de Groot recorded the painting in the collection of Count Andrassy in Budapest it was there, but gone by the time it was on public view in Paris at the Salle du Jeu de Paume. In what now feels like a prescient warning the skeleton just reemerged in a recent cleaning.
[1] Neil MacLaren & Christopher Brown, “Dirck Hals” in National Gallery Catalogues, The Dutch School, National Gallery Publications Ltd., London, 1991, p. 153.
[2] Peter C. Sutton, “Dirck Hals” in exhibition catalogue Masters of Seventeenth Century Dutch Genre Painting, Philadelphia Museum of Art, March 18 – May 13, 1984, p. 206.