A £50,000 HALS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 21 February 1931, Page 9

A £50,000 HALS

AMERICA’S RECORD PRICE PICTURE BOUGHT IN LONDON ; “PORTRAIT OF A J\IAN” / A painting by the Dutch master. Frans Hals, and valued at £50,000, has been bought by Mrs B. F. Jones, jun.. of Sewickley, P., widow of a Pittsburgh steel man. Thus the list of American-owned paintings by Hals has been augmented by one of* his finest portraits, entitled “Portrait of a Man.” The price paid for the portrait is believed to be one of the highest recorded in the United States.

The portrait, which was taken to America in October, had been for some twenty-five years’ the property of Arthur Ruck, in London. There it had long been recognised as one of Hals’ most sterling productions, a likeness jovial and animate, in the best mood of the master. It is of bust length and measures about twenty-five by thirty inches. It is predominantly grey in tone. The portrait is dated about 1630. This was when Hals was fifty years old and already had launched upon a busy career in Haarlem, whither he had moved from his birthplace in Antwerp.

APPRECIATION OF HALS GROWING

The price paid for the portrait points to the rapid growth in value as well as appreciation of Hals. In ISBS, for instance, £IOOO still was considered a high price. In 1908. however, the National Gallery, in London, paid about £25,000 for its famous family group formerly belonging to Lord Talbot, a price which then was viewed as rather ektrdme.

In the Drummond sale in London, in 1919, however, the much smaller portrait of Cozmans went to an unrecorded bidding for about £26,600. Hals generally is recognised as a portrait painter second only to Rembrandt, of Holland. One of the last line portraits by Hals to go to America rvas one purchased in 1921 by John McCormack, the singer, for £30,000. This was a “Portrait of a Man” from the collection of Count Maurice Zamoyski, the Polish Ambassador to France.