In the second episode of 'Frans Hals Paintings—The Podcast, I discuss Hals' c. 1647-1650 'A Family Group in a Landscape', which hangs at the National Gallery in London. The painting has long been attributed to Hals by scholars Cornelius Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), and Seymour Slive(1920-2014), though never by Claus Grimm (1930). Slive numbered the work number 176, in his 1974 catalogue. The painting shows a family of nine, and a nurse, for a total of ten figures; making it the most populated painting by Hals, excluding his famed militia pieces, most of which are housed in the Frans Hals Museum. Slive introduced a debate around the painting concerning the landscape in the background at left, of which Neil MacLaren (1909-1988) first proposed was painted by another painter, in a publication he authored in 1960. In this episode, this debate is unraveled in detail, concerning its origins, its evolvement over the years since 1960, and describes the interaction of the figures on the canvas. To conclude, future research directions are outlined, concerning what could be studied in this work—both attribution debate and concerning the identification of its sitters—of this most fabulously sumptuous, while also problematic, family painting, 'by' Frans Hals.

You can learn more about the painting over on the website of the National Gallery.

You can find John on X @johnbezold and at his website ⁠⁠⁠johnbezold.com⁠⁠⁠.

'Frans Hals Paintings—The Podcast' is published by Semicolon-Press.