Frans Hals 58 High Resolution Images

Be taken back in time by Frans Hals' amazingly detailed portraits from the Dutch Golden Age.

This download features 58 hi-res images, in jpeg format, by the artist Frans Hals.

The images are nearly all 600dpi (a couple are 300dpi) and range in size from 2800 pixels wide/tall to 15277 pixels wide/tall.

The pictures are out of copyright and in the public domain, so you are free to use them in whatever way you'd like, including commercial use.

Frans Hals the Elder (c1582-1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He lived and worked in Haarlem, a city in which the local authority of the day frowned on religious painting in places of worship, but citizens liked to decorate their homes with works of art. Hals was highly sought after by wealthy burgher commissioners of individual, married-couple, family and institutional-group portraits. He also painted tronies for the general market.

Hals was born in 1582 or 1583 in Antwerp, then in the Spanish Netherlands, as the son of cloth merchant Franchois Fransz Hals van Mechelen (c1542-1610) and his second wife Adriaentje van Geertenryck. Like many, Hals's parents fled during the Fall of Antwerp (1584-1585) from the south to Haarlem in the new Dutch Republic in the north, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Hals studied under Flemish émigré Karel van Mander, whose Mannerist influence, however, is barely noticeable in Hals's work.

In 1610, Hals became a member of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, and he started to earn money as an art restorer for the town council. He worked on their large art collection, which Karel van Mander had described in his Schilderboeck ("Painter's Book") published in Haarlem in 1604.  The restoration work was paid for by the council. The council had confiscated all Catholic religious art in the Haarlemse Noon, although it did not formally possess the entire collection until 1625, when the city fathers had decided which were suitable for the town hall. The remaining art, which was considered too Roman Catholic, was sold to Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen, a fellow guild member, on condition that he remove it from Haarlem. It was in this cultural context that Hals began his career in portraiture, since the market had disappeared for religious themes.

The earliest known example of Hals's art is the portrait of Jacobus Zaffius (1611). His 'breakthrough' came with the life-sized group portrait The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616. His most famous sitter was René Descartes, whom he painted in 1649.

Frans Hals married his first wife Anneke Harmensdochter around 1610. Frans was of Catholic birth, however, so their marriage was recorded in the city hall and not in church. Anneke died in 1615, shortly after the birth of their third child and, of the three, Harmen survived infancy and one had died before Hals's second marriage.

Contemporaries such as Rembrandt moved their households according to the caprices of their patrons, but Hals remained in Haarlem and insisted that his customers come to him. According to the Haarlem archives, a schutterstuk that Hals started in Amsterdam was finished by Pieter Codde because Hals refused to paint in Amsterdam, insisting that the militiamen come to Haarlem to sit for their portraits. For this reason, we can be sure that all sitters were either from Haarlem or were visiting Haarlem when they had their portraits made.

Hals's work was in demand through much of his life, but he lived so long that he eventually went out of style as a painter and experienced financial difficulties. In addition to his painting, he worked as a restorer, art dealer, and art tax expert for the city councillors. His creditors took him to court several times, and he sold his belongings to settle his debt with a baker in 1652. The inventory of the property seized mentions only three mattresses and bolsters, an armoire, a table, and five pictures (these were by himself, his sons, van Mander, and Maarten van Heemskerck). Left destitute, he was given an annuity of 200 florins in 1664 by the municipality.

Frans Hals died in Haarlem in 1666 and was buried in the Grote Kerk church. He had been receiving a city pension, which was highly unusual and a sign of the esteem with which he was regarded. After his death, his widow applied for aid and was admitted to the local almshouse, where she later died.