Banquet of the Officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard

Frans Hals painted this banquet scene in 1616, in Haarlem. He was about 34, recently admitted to the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, and this was his first major civic guard portrait. It established him as the leading portrait painter in Haarlem, a position he held for the next 50 years. Twelve officers of the Calivermen Civic Guard sit around a table laid with food and wine. They wear the orange sashes of their company, and each man holds a drinking glass, a pipe, or a piece of fruit. Behind them, a large window opens onto a view of Haarlem. The table is set with white linen, pewter plates, and a raised knife. At the top of the painting, a banner bears the company's coat of arms. Civic guard portraits were a Dutch specialty. Each city had several companies of volunteer militia, made up of prominent citizens who trained for defense and met for banquets. The companies commissioned group portraits to hang in their meeting halls, and each member paid for his own likeness. Before Hals, these paintings were stiff and formulaic: figures lined up in a row, each staring at the viewer. Hals broke the pattern by painting the officers as if they were in the middle of a party, talking, drinking, and laughing. Hals was born in Antwerp in 1582 and moved to Haarlem as a child. He spent his entire career there, painting portraits of the city's merchants, officials, and militia companies. He painted with a loose, rapid brushwork that was unlike anything else in Dutch art. His strokes are visible on the surface, each one placed with precision but left rough, giving his figures a sense of life and movement that more polished painters could not achieve. Oil on canvas, 175 by 324 centimeters, roughly 69 by 127 inches. Hals painted on a large scale, building the figures in broad strokes of color over a dark ground. The faces are more carefully rendered than the clothing, with each officer's expression individually characterized. The orange sashes are painted in thick, loaded strokes of lead-tin yellow and red lake. The wide horizontal format and group subject make this print work well in a dining room, living room, or hallway with traditional furniture. The Haarlem subject and civic guard theme suit a room with Dutch or Flemish decor. A dark wood frame matches the painting's tonal range. The 18x24 size gives the figures enough room to read. The painting is in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, in the building where the civic guard originally met. This is a public domain artwork. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 18x24 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.