The drumstick player

The drum pot player with 6 children
	Frans Hals , before 1630
	Oil on canvas
	105 × 84 cm
	Privately owned

The drum pot player with 5 children
	Frans Hals , ca.1618–1622
	Oil on canvas
	106 x 80.3 cm
	Privately owned

The drum pot player is a motif by the Dutch painter Frans Hals .

The old drumstick player is half-length in the foreground a little to the right of the center of the picture, turned three-quarters to the left. He turns his head, covered with a black floppy hat, towards the viewer. With his right hand he plays the hummingbird and sings with a smile. He is surrounded - depending on the version - by five or six children who listen with fascination. Behind him to the right is a taller fellow with a red beret or brim hat . On the left the paintings show four or five smaller children; three boys who adore him and one or two girls. Two more children appear in a half-open door in the background on the left. The crafty drumstick player wears a black suit, including a red doublet and a white shirt. The children wear light brown or dark costumes.

Although Frans Hals was mainly active as a portrait painter, the genre paintings of the painter are often the focus of discussions. Many variants of motif groups of this genre appeared at the end of the 19th century. Up to the most recent research, contradicting painting attributions can be found.

It is believed that the famous Haarlem genre painting and portrait painter Frans Hals created two original versions of the portrayal of the funny but also cunning ( fox tail on the hat, traditional fool attribute ) rummy pot player making music : one with five and one with six happy children of different ages Foreground.

Both versions have been preserved in several contemporary workshop replicas. When cataloging in 1974 seven variants were recorded, which differ in the minor characters. In the background in the doorway, two more children, in one case three children, are shown in most cases. There are also differences in the main characters. One time there are three boys out of six children, the other time four. The two figures in the doorway of all contemporary paintings that are to be taken seriously are indicated in a similar way to those that can be seen above the heads of the figures of the merry company. Some of the verifiable specimens are with certainty or likely workshop replicas, while the rest are later copies.

Even during his lifetime, Hals was very famous beyond Haarlem's borders and had a large workshop that carried out his commissioned work, e.g. B. the Schützengilde paintings. This is also documented in the 1679 paintings by the painter Jan van de Cappelle (1626–1679), who was already collecting Hals at that time. This painter also had “een rommelpot” and had himself portrayed by his friend Rembrandt and von Hals.

Hals' treatment of the subject was entirely new at the time. There is hardly a composition in the work of Hals that has been repeated and copied so often as that of the drumstick player. For stylistic reasons, the original version must have been created in the early creative period of the master 1618–1622 and after completion must have remained in the possession of Frans Hals for a long time and served as a model for orders for the repetitions he derived.

The portrayal was apparently extremely popular. In no previous picture is the cheerfulness of a group of children in an exuberant mood at close range in full life size as the focus. The effect of the painting is based on this. This is thanks to the - for this time - new way in which Hals designed the theme. While with his predecessors like Pieter Brueghel the Elder and David Vinckboons the music-making beggars with their youthful listeners were subordinate to the landscape, with Hals the group of the Rommelpotspielers and the admiring and cheerful crowd of children standing around him is for the first time the main thing and large-figured strongly impressionistic - for this time - painted.

The red beret, the brimmed hat or the fur cap, which the somewhat older fool wears with a wink and sticking out his tongue, suggests a carnival scene . But at other festivals such as Christmas the humming pot was played and masks were worn.

The earliest, best and uncircumcised copy of the Rommelpotspielers with 5 children is considered to be the "Munich version", made 1618–1622 (formerly private collection Netherlands, see Slive 1989 p. 148, now in a private collection in Munich) and the somewhat later, cropped " Kimbell Art Museum Version “formerly the Sir Frederick Cook collection, now in Forth Worth Texas. Both paintings have been examined by several museums and recognized institutes.

The trimmed Kimbell version was classified as a copy of a missing original by Slive himself (Vol. 3 1974 Cat.No. L3-1) and all other neck experts until 1974. In 1989/90 he surprisingly presented this work in the Frans Hals exhibition as the artist's original work (see exhibition catalog Washington / London / Haarlem 1989/90). An incomprehensible decision that Prof. Dr. C. Grimm 1989 and 2002, P. Sutton 1990, the Frans Hals Museum 1994 and 1998, Prof. Dr. However, J. Müller Hofstede 1995, WL van de Watering 1991 and other neck experts do not join.

The “Munich version” counts as the earliest, best, uncircumcised, examined, even monogrammed in the door frame of the Rommelpotspielers with 6 children - now in a private collection in Munich . The Wilton House version (private collection of the Earl of Pembroke Wales ) came a little later.

These four versions of the Rommelpotspielers with 5 and 6 children best document - apart from the later copies - the genre painting in this subject between 1618 and 1630 by Frans Hals. There are also other versions with individual images of the drumstick player without children.

literature

Hofstede de Groot Vol III 1910
Valentiner, Vol. XXVIII 1921
Slive, 1970-1974
P. Grimm, 1972
Slive, 1989/90,
Frans-Hals-Museum in Haarlem 1994/1989