In any age or under any circumstances

In any age or under any circumstances Frans Hals would have seemed a remarkable painter, but to measure his extraordinary genius to its full height we must try to realise what those times and those circumstances were. In Florence and Venice, as we have seen, there were great schools of painting, and in Florence especially, the whole city existed in an atmosphere of art. There was no escape from it. oil paintings
In Haarlem, where Hals spent his youth (he was born in Antwerp), there was no such state of affairs. There were no chapels to be decorated, no courtiers to be flattered. The country was seething with the effects of war, and the whole population were ready for it again at a moment's notice. There were plenty of heroes—every man was one—but not of the romantic sort. They were all bluff, hardy fellows, who wanted to get on with their business. Who would have thought that they wanted to have their portraits painted? original oil paintings
And who, accordingly, could have induced them to do so except a bluff, roystering genius like Hals, who slashed them down on canvas before they had time to stop him? Once it got wind that Hals was such a good fellow, and that he dashed off a portrait to the life in as little time as it took to pass the time of day with him, he had plenty of business, and from painting single portraits he was commissioned to glorify the Guilds by depicting their banquets, which he did with almost as much speed and considerably more fidelity than the limelight man at a City dinner in these times. His first great group—The Archers of S. George, at Haarlem—has all the appearance of being painted instantaneously as the banqueters stood around the table before dispersing. abstract oil paintings