Frans Hals

Frans Hals painted people who look like they are about to say something. The brushwork is fast and left visible, with strokes that read as slapdash close up and snap into cuffs, lace and skin at a few paces. Nothing in seventeenth century Dutch portraiture moves like it.

He worked almost entirely in Haarlem and almost entirely on portraits, including the enormous group pieces of civic guard companies, which were a compositional nightmare: a dozen men, each paying, each expecting to be visible. He solved them better than anyone.

His reputation collapsed after his death and stayed low until the nineteenth century, when Manet and the Impressionists recognised what the loose handling was doing. He ended his life in financial trouble, receiving municipal support. The late portraits, in near monochrome blacks and greys, are the ones painters tend to admire most.