Gemäldegalerie

Gemäldegalerie

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Frans Hals, Malle Babbe, Detail
Frans Hals, Malle Babbe, Detail © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Christoph Schmidt
Frans Hals, “Malle Babbe”, detail
Frans Hals, “Malle Babbe”, detail © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Christoph Schmidt
Frans Hals, “Malle Babbe” (black-and-white photograph of the inscribed canvas frame)
Frans Hals, “Malle Babbe” (black-and-white photograph of the inscribed canvas frame) © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Walter Steinkopf
Execution of the hyperspectral imaging process on the painting “Malle Babbe” (2016)
Execution of the hyperspectral imaging process on the painting “Malle Babbe” (2016) © Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie / Babette Hartwieg
Frans Hals, “Malle Babbe”, macro X-Ray fluorescence scan, distribution of the element manganese, made from brown soil (yellow)
Frans Hals, “Malle Babbe”, macro X-Ray fluorescence scan, distribution of the element manganese, made from brown soil (yellow) © TU Delft / Universiteit van Amsterdam, Arie Wallert
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Frans Hals / not Frans Hals

Pilot Study on the Possibility of Distinguishing the Oeuvre of Frans Hals

After Rembrandt and Vermeer, Frans Hals is viewed as one of the three greatest painters of 17th-century Dutch painting. Despite this, there has been very little research carried out on his oeuvre. The objective of this interdisciplinary research project was to analyse the art-historical attribution criteria for Hals’s oeuvre, and to test out new, technology-assisted procedures.

This pilot project focused on methods of distinguishing the oeuvre of Frans Hals from works by both successors and counterfeiters. In a first step, the prevailing criteria of attribution were analysed. Following this, two works that have been positively attributed to Frans Hals from Berlin (Malle Babbe and his Portrait of a Lady), a painting from the Metropolitan Museum in New York whose attribution has been contested, and a known fake from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam were inspected using various forms of imaging, and the outcomes were assessed in an interdisciplinary approach. Assessing this case study in this manner was intended to assess whether these methods could replace or supplement traditional art-historical methods.

This pilot study was carried out in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Delft University of Technology, the University of Amsterdam, Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

  • Anna Tummers and Andrei Anisimov et al.: “Riddle of Different Versions”, in: Anna Tummers and Rob Erdman (eds.): Frans Hals or Not Frans Hals: Connoisseurship, Technical Analyses and Advanced Data Science (forthcoming in 2024).
  • Anna Tummers, Andrei Anisimov et al.: “Riddle of Different Versions”, in: Journal of Art Crime Fall 2023 (forthcoming).
  • Andrey Anisimov et al.: “Supplementing the Eye: The Technical Analysis of Frans Hals’s Paintings – I”, in: Burlington Magazine 161 (2019), pp. 934–941.
  • Nouchka de Keyser, Anna Tummers and Arie Wallert: “Supplementing the Eye: The Technical Analysis of Frans Hals’s Paintings – II”, in: Burlington Magazine 161 (2019), pp. 996–1003.
  • Andrey Anisimov et al.: “Hyperspectral Imaging to Guide Technical Art Analysis of Frans Hals Paintings”, in: Conference proceedings of the Lacona conference on Lasers in the Conservation of Artworks, Paris 2018.

Objectives and outcomes: Object-related research on the collection holdings and the refinement of art-historical methods
Project overseen by: Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), Netherlands Institute for Conservation, Art and Science (NICAS)
Lead researchers: Anna Tummers (Curator at the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem), Leiden University
Project participants: Dr Andrei Anisimov (TU Delft), Prof. Rob Erdman (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and University of Amsterdam), Dr Roger M. Groves (TU Delft),  Dr Babette Hartwieg (Head of conservation at the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Dr Katja Kleinert (Curator of 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting at the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Claudia Laurenze-Landsberg (former conservator at the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and expert in neutron autoradiography), Dorothee Mahon (Metropolitan Museum, New York), Dr Vassilis M. Papadakis (TU Delft), Prof. Arie Wallert (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
Collaboration partners: Frans-Hals-Museum, Haarlem, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Metropolitan Museum, New York, University of Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology
Project duration: 2016 to 2023 (2016 to 2018 funded by NWO, 2019 to 2022 funded by NICAS)

Further information