The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (213 page)

Hague School
.

Group of Dutch artists who worked in The Hague between about 1860 and 1900. The group is particularly associated with landscapes and beach scenes, but the members also painted street scenes, views of everyday life, and church interiors. In some ways this was a
Romantic
revival of the 17th-cent. tradition, and this romantically nostalgic strain—particularly in pictures made during the first years the group worked together—is one of the things which distinguishes them from their French counterparts, the painters of the
Barbizon School
and the
Impressionists
. They shared with the great Dutch landscapists of the 17th cent. a special sensitivity in recording light and atmospheric effects. Leading members of the Hague School included
Bosboom
,
Israëls
, the
Maris
brothers,
Mauve
,
Mesdag
, and
Weissenbruch
.

 
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(1582/3–1666).
Dutch painter. He was born in Antwerp, the son of Flemish parents who moved to Holland after the city fell to the Spaniards in 1585. His parents had settled in Haarlem by 1591 and he spent his long life there. He was twice married, had at least ten children, and was constantly in financial trouble.
Houbraken
says he was ‘filled to the gills every evening’, but there is no real foundation for the popular image of him as a drunken wife-beater. His second wife, however, was more than once in trouble for brawling. During his last years he was destitute and the municipal authorities of Haarlem awarded him a small annual stipend four years before his death.
Hals was the first great artist of the 17th-cent. Dutch school and is regarded as one of the most brilliant of all portraitists. Almost all his works are portraits and even those that are not (some
genre
scenes, and an occasional religious picture) are portrait-like in character. He is said to have been taught in Haarlem by Karel van
Mander
, but there is no discernible influence from him in Hals's early works, which are not numerous or well documented. The earliest extant picture is the fragment of a portrait
Jacobus Zaffius
(Hals Mus., Haarlem, 1611), and upon the basis of stylistic evidence one or two paintings can be dated a year or so earlier. Nothing he did before 1616 suggested that he would shatter well-established traditions with his life-size group portrait
The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company
(Hals Mus.) painted during that year. There is no precedent in either his own work or that of his predecessors for the vigorous composition and characterization of this picture, which has become a symbol of the strength and healthy optimism of the men who established the new Dutch Republic. It demonstrates to the full his remarkable ability—his greatest gift as a portraitist—to capture a sense of fleeting movement and expression and thereby convey a compelling feeling of vivacity.
From 1616 onwards there is no shortage of dated or documented works and his artistic development is clear. He was at the height of his popularity in the 1620s and 1630s. During these decades he made five large group portraits of civic guards; one (finished by Pieter
Codde
) is in the Rijksmuseum and the others are in the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, the only place where one can get a comprehensive view of his range and power. In the 1630s his compositions became simpler and monochromatic effects took the place of the bright colours of the earlier paintings (
Lucas de Clercq
and
Feyntje van Steenkiste
, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1635). The group portrait of the
Regents of the St Elizabeth Hospital
(Hals Mus., 1641) sets the key for the sober restraint of the late period, when his pictures became darker and his brush-strokes more economical. The culmination of this phase—indeed of his entire career—are his group portraits of the
Regents
and the
Regentesses of the Old Men's Alms House
(Hals Mus.,
c.
1664), which rank among the most moving portraits ever painted. By this time Hals was using in his commissioned portraits the bold brushwork and the
alla prima
technique which early in his career he reserved for genre pictures. No drawings by him are known and he presumably worked straight on to the canvas.
Hals had two painter brothers and five painter sons, but the only artist of substance among them was his brother
Dirk
(1591–1656), who painted charming small interior scenes. Apart from his sons, Hals taught numerous pupils, including (with varying degrees of certainty) Judith
Leyster
, Jan Miense
Molenaer
, Adriaen van
Ostade
, Adriaen
Brouwer
, and Philips
Wouwerman
. His reputation did not long outlive him, however, and with rare exceptions—
Reynolds
was one of them—few critics before 1850 praised him. It was only in the second half of the 19th cent. that there was a renewed appreciation of his genius. The spontaneity of his work appealed to the generation of the
Impressionists
, and from about 1870 to about 1920 he was one of the most popular of the Old Masters, becoming a model for society portraitists. Lord Hertford's purchase of his most famous work.
The Laughing Cavalier
(Wallace Coll., London, 1624), for the then enormous sum of 51,00 francs in 1865, was a milestone in the revival of his fortunes, and the buoyant confidence of his paintings later made him a particular favourite with the new generation of fabulously rich American collectors—self-made men-who were beginning to dominate the picture market. This explains why so many works by him are in American collections.

 
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(1723–98).
Scottish painter, archaeologist, and picture-dealer, active mainly in Italy. He settled permanently in Rome in 1756, and was a leading member of the
Neoclassical
circle of
Mengs
and
Winckelmann
. His archaeological excavations near Rome resulted in many important additions to contemporary collections, and his interest in antiquity exerted a decisive influence on the young
Canova
. Hamilton's history paintings, mostly of Homeric subjects, were influenced by
Poussin
as well as by the
antique
(
Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus
, NG, Edinburgh, 1763). They were never very numerous and today are generally regarded as rather tepid, but they became well known through engravings, and greatly influenced the development of the Neoclassical style amongst both his contemporaries and the younger generation, including
David
. Indeed, Hamilton was much better known on the Continent than in Britain, where his name was more familiar for his activities in selling Old Masters and classical antiquities (he was one of the wealthiest artists in Rome). Together with
Barry
, and the Anglo-Americans
West
and
Copley
, he is one of the few painters to have made a significant contribution to
history painting
in Britain. Gavin Hamilton is not to be confused with
Gawen Hamilton
(1697?–1737), a minor portrait painter remembered for his
Conversation of Virtuosis… at the Kings Armes
(NPG, London, 1735), which shows himself and several other artists of the day.

 
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(1922– ).
British painter, printmaker, teacher, and writer, one of the leading pioneers of
Pop art
. As a young man he worked in advertising and commercial art and he is best known for his montages featuring scenes from the fields of advertisement and contemporary life, notably
Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?
(Kunsthalle, Tübingen, 1956). This photomontage is sometimes considered to be the first Pop art work. Hamilton has had an influence on, among others, Peter
Blake
and David
Hockney
. He has had a distinguished career as a teacher, notably at King's College, Newcastle upon Tyne (which later became Newcastle University), 1953–66, and has organized several exhibitions, including ‘The Almost Complete Works of Marcel
Duchamp
’ at the Tate Gallery, London, in 1966. An anthology of his writings,
Collected Works
, appeared in 1982. See also
INDEPENDENT GROUP
.