Two portraits: Marie Larp and Pieter Dircksz Tjarck, painted as a pendant pair by Frans Hals in about 1635, a year after their marriage. And what a couple they make. Pieter Tjarck holds a pink rose – a symbol, perhaps, of his love for his new wife. But it fairly flops from his fingers, less a prop than an afterthought. It’s his face that’s the main attraction: carefully considering eyes, outstandingly bristly moustache, that long, well-earned groove between his eyebrows. Tipped back in his seat, as if ready to answer any question, his unstudied aspect makes Marie Larp seem almost impossibly formal beside him, her back straight, her embroidered dress without any crease or fold. Look a little harder, though. The scarlet of her cheeks, the way her hand presses lightly against her ribcage, cannot be misread. Her countenance speaks down the centuries of a very particular kind of fulfilment: a contentment that still, we understand, has its excitements. Even if her ruff is stiff and starched, she is the human embodiment of a sigh.
At the National Gallery, these paintings may be seen together for the first time since the 19th century – one of a series of grand (and in their case, heart-flipping) coups in the first major exhibition of the work of Frans Hals for more than 30 years. The Laughing Cavalier (1624) has travelled from the nearby Wallace Collection, where it has hung since 1900; one of the artist’s vast group portraits has made its way to London from the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem for the first time. But even were it not for such showstopping loans, this exhibition, curated with hands-off elegance and quiet passion by Bart Cornelis, would still be wondrous. Make your way round it – there are some 50 works on display – and once you’ve lifted your jaw from the ground, you will wonder why Hals has for so long played second fiddle (and, sometimes, not even that) to contemporaries such as Rembrandt and Velázquez. It may strike you as the great art mystery of our age.
