Hals: An Important Showing

THE EXHIBIT at the Schaeffer Galleries of a considerable portion of the American loans to the Frans Hals Exhibition at Haarlem last summer was a happy idea, for it serves two important purposes. The proceeds from the exhibition, are to go to the scholarship funds of the graduate School of Fine Arts of New York University; while the superb pictures themselves form a showing of more than usual significance. For Hals, more than any other artist of similar stature, has needed in America the illumination which carefully arranged exhibits can provide. His pictures have; to be sure, been well known and properly catalogued under his name in all public collections for a century past, since his style is so distinct as to admit no confusion; and during the reign of Impressionism in this country a certain phase of his work achieved immense popularity. But this very popularity, while it brought many great pictures to America, was so one-sided that it has in a way obscured the true nature of the artist's achievement. T...