In the third episode of 'Frans Hals Paintings—The Podcast’, I discuss Frans Hals and Claes van Heussen's 1630 'Fruit and Vegetable Seller', which is in a private collection in England, and is hardly ever on display. The painting has long been attributed to Hals by scholars Cornelius Hofstede de Groot (1863-1930), Seymour Slive (1920-2014), and Claus Grimm (1930). Slive numbered the work number 70, in his 1974 catalogue. The painting depicts a market scene focused on a central female figure, who stands at a three-quarters angle to the viewer, her head turned to face the viewer, with a faint, coy suggestion of a smile. It is the only painting by Hals to have a date, that is not a commissioned portrait; instead, straddling the line between a still life, market-scene, and a genre painting. It is long thought that it was not painted to be a 'portrait', in the traditional sense; and so the sitter's identity is unknown. Near the end of the episode, parallels are drawn between large scale paintings depicting fruits, vegetables, pork, and meats—like those produced in Antwerp during the 1500s and early 1600s, by artists such as Joachim Beuckelaer (1533-1574) and Frans Snyders (1579-1657)—and that of Hals and Van Heussen.

To learn more about Flemish 'market-scenes', have a read of Elizabeth Alice Honig's Painting and the Market in Early Modern Antwerp (Yale University Press, 1998).

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

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