Dirck Hals painting for sale / tableaux a vendre / schilderij te koop - A merry company playing tric-trac in an interior
Dirck Hals painting for sale / tableaux a vendre / schilderij te koop - A merry company playing tric-trac in an interior
Dirck Hals
(1591 - Haarlem - 1656)

“A merry company playing tric-trac in an interior”

Oil on panel 31 x 40,5 cm

Notes

Dirck Hals was the brother of the painter Frans Hals and was specialized in small paintings of “conversation pieces” or “merry companies” (Dutch: Gezelschapjes).

The Haarlem writer Samuel Ampzing mentions both brothers in his Praise of Haarlem with a poem stating that both brothers were exceptional; Frans painting his portraits “awake”, and Dirck painting his figures “purely”. He was buried in the Waalse Kerk (Haarlem). A slightly different version, without the broken glass on the lower right was with Sotheby’s London in 1999. The provenance of this picture was confused with our picture in both the auction catalogue and the catalogue raisonné by Nehlsen-Marten.

Very little is known about Dirck Hals and except for a visit to Leiden in the early 1640s, most of his career seems to have been spent in Haarlem where he worked in the shadow of his elder brother Frans Hals.

Provenance

  • Ernst Hölscher, Mülheim
  • His deceased sale, Berlin Lepke, 1916, lot 23
  • Collection Camillo Castiglioni Vienna
  • His sale, Amsterdam Frederik Muller, 1925, lot 62 (3400)
  • Private collection Italy

Literature

Britta Nehlsen-Marten, Dirck Hals 1591-1656 Oeuvre und Entwicklung eines Haarlemmer Genremalers, Weimar 2003, p.297, no. 258, pl. 168.

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