Page "Frans Hals" Paragraph 4

Historians have erroneously reported that he mistreated his first wife, Anneke Hermansz ( Annetje Harmensdochter Abeel ), based on records that a Frans Hals was charged with spousal abuse in Haarlem in 1616.

However, as biographer Seymour Slive has pointed out, the Frans Hals in question was not the artist, but another Haarlem resident of the same name.

Indeed, at the time of these charges, the artist had no wife to mistreat as Anneke had died during labor earlier in 1616.

Similarly, historical accounts of Hals ' propensity for drink have been largely based on embellished anecdotes of his early biographers, namely Arnold Houbraken, with no direct evidence existing documenting such.

In 1617, he married Lysbeth Reyniers, the young daughter of a fishmonger that he had taken in to look after his two children.

They married in Spaarndam, a small village outside the banns of Haarlem, because she was already 8 months pregnant.

Frans Hals was a devoted father and they went on to have eight children.

Where Hals contemporaries such as Rembrandt moved their households according to the caprices of patrons, Hals remained in Haarlem and insisted that his customers came to him.

According to the Haarlem archives, a militia piece that Hals started in Amsterdam was finished by another painter because Hals refused to paint in Amsterdam, insisting that the militiamen come to Haarlem to sit for their portraits.