Frans Hals - Eye to Eye with Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian - Tapa dura

An increasing acknowledgement of the artistic connections between the Dutch Republic and the South Netherlands is shaping much current scholarship. This excellent volume by Tummers (Frans Hals Museum) et al. articulates the parallel aesthetic interests among Dutch and Flemish painters, in visible brushwork and subjects. The critical reception of the Venetian Renaissance painter Titian established the theoretical basis for such appreciation of visible painterly strokes. However, the underlying theme of pronounced viscosity in paint links Hals, Rembrandt, and Rubens. Rubbens visited Haarlem in 1612 with the intent to hire engravers from that city. Hals spent some months in Antwerp in 1616. Rembrandt was familiar with the works by Rubens that he viewed in Holland, and would have been familiar with Hals's portraits in Amsterdam collections... Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through professionals/practitioners.--A. Golahny "CHOICE "

2013 is officially Frans Hals Year, marking exactly 100 years since the Frans Hals Museum opened its doors. The most important exhibition in this jubilee year is 'Frans Hals: Eye to Eye with Rembrandt, Rubens and Titian', in which key works by Frans Halsare presented amid paintings by such famed colleagues as Titian, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Jordaens and Rubens. In this eponymous publication, all the works in the exhibition are presented side by side, enabling the reader to compare the masterpieces and see how the artists inspired one another. These unique confrontations of master painters are essential to an understanding of seventeenth-century art. Famous painters, after all, often produced their works in response to one another, with the aim of surpassing the other and creating something unique. (Exhibition: Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the Netherlands (23.3.-28.7.2013)).