Art Review: Wallace Collection in London

Last week I wrote about the Wallace Collection’s very good exhibition on the male portraits of Frans Hals. How can anyone not like Hals? I used the term “razzle-dazzle” in the title of the piece, since “bravura” is tired and doesn’t serve Hals well. No one paints so confidently and so freely, at least among the famous Old Masters, and no one can make a fat Dutch burgher look like a movie star. No wonder Heineken was among the show’s leading sponsors. Some of the men, as in The Laughing Cavalier and the portrait of Jasper Schade, were rich young studs and GQ- or Town and Country–worthy, but most were middle-aged businessmen. They weren’t aristocrats but bourgeois. I don’t think any of them considered themselves regal. After a few pints, I can see them all doing the Dutch “Macarena.” They’re full of life, depicted in the moment, and that’s a razzle-dazzle look.

I loved the exhibition and, of course, loved my visit to the museum. The Great Gallery is one of my favorite places on earth. Rubens’s big Rainbow Landscape is there. He painted it in 1636 for his own pleasure. At age 53 and a widower, he’d married a 16-year-old, so I suspect pleasure wasn’t in short supply but, hey, who but a drudge argues against more pleasure? It’s a thing of beauty and a bit religious in that the Old Testament rainbow signaled God’s covenant with man after the Flood: live wisely and well, and abundance will be yours.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

Last week I wrote about the Wallace Collection’s very good exhibition on the male portraits of Frans Hals. How can anyone not like Hals? I used the term “razzle-dazzle” in the title of the piece, since “bravura” is tired and doesn’t serve Hals well. No one paints so confidently and so freely, at least among the famous Old Masters, and no one can make a fat Dutch burgher look like a movie star. No wonder Heineken was among the show’s leading sponsors. Some of the men, as in The Laughing Cavalier and the portrait of Jasper Schade, were rich young studs and GQ- or Town and Country–worthy, but most were middle-aged businessmen. They weren’t aristocrats but bourgeois. I don’t think any of them considered themselves regal. After a few pints, I can see them all doing the Dutch “Macarena.” They’re full of life, depicted in the moment, and that’s a razzle-dazzle look.

I loved the exhibition and, of course, loved my visit to the museum. The Great Gallery is one of my favorite places on earth. Rubens’s big Rainbow Landscape is there. He painted it in 1636 for his own pleasure. At age 53 and a widower, he’d married a 16-year-old, so I suspect pleasure wasn’t in short supply but, hey, who but a drudge argues against more pleasure? It’s a thing of beauty and a bit religious in that the Old Testament rainbow signaled God’s covenant with man after the Flood: live wisely and well, and abundance will be yours.