Frans Hals usually painted life-size portraits, but he also made a number of tiny likenesses. Among the loans from the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo collection is a painting hardly bigger than a sheet of paper, in which Hals’s celebrated brushwork, loose and suggestive, is scaled down to breathtaking effect. It is a masterpiece of virtuosity and intensity. In this lecture, John Walsh surveys the careers of Hals and his competitors.

This lecture is part of the series A History of Dutch Painting in Six Pictures.



Series description:

A History of Dutch Painting in Six Pictures

Fridays at 1:30 pm

January 23–February 27

John Walsh, B.A. 1961, Director Emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, and specialist in Dutch paintings, offers a series of lectures that explores the art of the Dutch Republic during its extraordinary flowering in the 17th century. By focusing on a single work each week and examining its artistic, intellectual, and political contexts, the audience will become familiar with six great paintings and the artists who made them. Three of the works are on view at the Gallery and the others are in Dutch museums. Walsh examines the artists’ intentions, the role of competition in the art market, and the development of artistic styles. The lecture series coincides with the loan of 30 important Dutch and Flemish paintings to the Gallery from the collection of Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo.