Frans Hals: A Lost Masterpiece Rediscovered

On 1st December Colnaghi- Bernheimer and Salomon Lilian Old Master Paintings will be unveiling an extremely rare religious painting of St. Mark by the great Dutch 17th century master Frans Hals. Recently bought from a German private collection, it will be on public display for the first time in 30 years at Colnaghi, 15 Old Bond Street, London W1 as the centrepiece of a “Picture in Focus” exhibition until 30th January 2009. The ‘exhibition will then move to Bernheimer Fine Old Masters in Munich from 10th until 28th February 2009 to coincide with the Frans Hals and Haarlem’s Masters from the Golden Age exhibition showing at the Kunsthalle in Munich.

The St. Mark is one of only four known surviving religious paintings by Frans Hals. It forms part of a remarkable set of paintings of the Evangelists, formerly in the Hermitage Collection, St Peters, which belonged in the eighteenth-century to the Russian Empress, Catherine the Great, now distributed between Colnaghi-Lilian, the J. Paul Getty Museum (St John) and the Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Odessa (St Luke and St Matthew). Deaccessioned in 1812 and sent to a church in Crimea, the paintings disappeared for over a hundred years. In 1959 St Luke and St Matthew were rediscovered in the store-room of the Odessa Museum and in 1997 the St John reappeared at Sotheby’s in London where it was bought by the Getty Museum. The Colnaghi-Lilian St Mark painting was rediscovered in the 1970s masquerading as a Portrait of a Gentleman, with lacy ruff and sleeves under a layer of 19th-century over-paint. Cleaning confirmed the true identity of the saint, but although published by Claus Grimm in an academic journal and therefore known to scholars, the painting has not been seen publically for over thirty years. Its re-emergence on to the art market allows this remarkable series to be completed and reconsidered.

The painting of St. Mark is notable for its forceful characterisation, expressive power and mastery of rapid brushwork, qualities which were much praised in the eighteenth century by Ernst Minich, author of the 1774 Hermitage museum catalogue of paintings.

Of all the four paintings, the Colnaghi-Bernheimer St Mark is arguably, as Professor Claus Grimm wrote 'the most Italianate, most theatrical of Hals's saints'. These qualities are combined with a notable realism, compared to its Italian counterparts and a mastery of brushwork, whose brilliance and fluency has been revealed by its recent cleaning.

Why and for whom the pictures were painted is a mystery. They could have been painted for a church, or private chapel, possibly a clandestine Catholic chapel in Haarlem. But subjects of the Evangelists were equally popular with Protestant patrons, for whom they represented the triumph of the Word of God as opposed to ecclesiastical authority and they may also have been destined for a secular context, such as a library. All four paintings are lit from the left, suggesting they may have been intended to be hung to the right of a window, probably in a tiered arrangement, as was customary in the seventeenth century and the exhibition proposes a conjectural hang with the Colnaghi-Bernheimer St Mark (the only one of the four paintings to be monogrammed) occupying the prime position one the top left hand side of the upper tier alongside the Getty St John with the more homely Odessa Evangelists below.

‘It gives Colnaghi-Bernheimer and Salomon Lilian give pleasure to commemorate the resurrection of Frans Hals’ St. Mark with this ‘Picture in Focus’ exhibition, which it is hoped, will highlight one of the least familiar aspects of an artist, who next to Rembrandt, was unquestionably, the greatest Dutch portrait painter of the seventeenth century, but who was also a powerful and original religious artist.’, commented Konrad Bernheimer of Colnaghi-Bernheimer and Salomon Lilian of Salomon Lilian Old Master Paintings.

A fully illustrated catalogue is available at £20 which discusses the history of St Mark and the other Hals Evangelists, their iconography and their relationship with other paintings of the Apostles and Evangelists by Hals’s contemporaries Ter Brugghen, Rubens, Van Dyck, Jan Lievens and Rembrandt.

A Frans Hals Study Day will be held at Colnaghi on Saturday 17th January 2008, chaired by Dr Christopher Brown, Director of the Asmolean Museum and with lectures given by Professor Sir Christopher White former Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Dr Marjorie. E (Betsy) Wieseman, Curator of Dutch Paintings at the National Gallery, Professor Dr. Claus Grimm, the internationally renowned Frans Hals expert and Jeremy Howard, Head of Research, Colnaghi. The study day including lunch costs £65 per head.

About the speakers and their talks:

Jeremy Howard, author of the current catalogue Frans Hals: a Lost Masterpiece Rediscovered, is Head of Research at Colnaghi, having rejoined the firm in 2006 after 15 years as an academic. He has published widely on aspects of British eighteenth and nineteenth-century collecting and a number of exhibition catalogues. The earliest record of Hals’s Evangelists occurred in 1760. This talk speculates about their earlier history, who might have commissioned them, and how and where they might have hung, as well as discussing their iconographic relationship to earlier traditions and contemporary paintings of Apostles and Evangelists.

Professor Claus Grimm was Director of the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte in Augsburg and a Professor at the University of Munich. An authority on Frans Hals and Lucas Cranach the Elder, he has also written books on still-life painting and Rembrandt's self-portraits as well as a pioneering study of picture frames. In 1972, after publishing his PhD-thesis on Frans Hals, he became intrigued by a mysterious ‘Portrait of a Gentleman’ which came up for sale in London. He persuaded the owner to commission a technical examination and his detective work and the subsequent cleaning of the picture led to the rediscovery of Frans Hals's St Mark. His talk examines this remarkable rediscovery and that of Hals's other three Evangelists which disappeared in the nineteenth century.


Dr. Marjorie. E. (Betsy) Wieseman is Curator of Dutch paintings at the National Gallery, London, having previously worked at the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Allen Memorial Art Museum. In 2002 she published a monograph on Caspar Netscher and Late Seventeenth-century Dutch Painting. She also contributed an article on genre portraiture to the important exhibition The Age of Rubens (1993/4, Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Toledo Museum of Art) and has organised exhibitions on topics ranging from portrait miniatures to the oil sketches of Peter Paul Rubens. Her talk will examine Hals’s subject pieces, a less well-known aspect of one of the most innovative painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Sir Christopher White is a notable authority on Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century painting, who has published important books on Rembrandt and Rubens. He started his career at the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum, was a director of Colnaghi between 1965 and 1971, before moving as curator to the National Gallery, Washington. From 1973 to 1985 he was Director of Studies at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and from 1985 to 1997, Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. His talk compares the portraiture and artistic personality of Frans Hals with that of his great contemporary Rembrandt.

Dr. Christopher Brown (Chair) is Director of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and was previously Chief Curator of the National Gallery, London. A notable authority on Dutch and Flemish painting, he has organised important exhibitions on Dutch landscape art, history painting, Rembrandt, Rubens's landscapes and Van Dyck. He has written on Carel Fabritius, Rembrandt, Rubens and Van Dyck.

Total cost £65 (price includes lunch with wine, and refreshments throughout the course of the day).
Places are strictly limited.

To book your place please contact Livia Schaafsma at contact@colnaghi.co.uk or call 0207 491 7408.