Teylers and Hals

Teylers and Hals

I've already written about how impressed I was by the Teylers and Frans Hals museums in Haarlem. I need to expand on that fine afternoon further accompanied by some images of those visits.







Pieter Teyler van der Hulst was a maker of linen and successful banker in Haarlem. These were the times of the enlightenment when the line between science and art seemed to overlap freely. He bequeathed his fortune to create a museum dedicated to those subjects. The huge cabinet or room was the first major feature of the museum which expended more fully a hundred years later. An additional modern wing was added a little over a hundred years later, but the majority of this institution seems locked in time to its early centuries.

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The first three gallery rooms of the Teyners are the most impressive. I don't believe they use any other illumination than natural light from the side windows. The first two rooms are full of bones and fossils. The next room, by contrast is a very impressive collection of 19th century scientific instruments that measured and manipulate electronic impulses, light, sound, and gasses. Teyners also features a great flourescent room.

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It was at Teyners that I became acquainted with the 19th century paintings of George Hendrik Breitner. I found him intriguing because he was both a photographer and an accomplished painter with elements of both expressionism and impressionism.
I like that the subjects of his paintings are ordinary folks and that they are often framed off center, much like a candid street photograph would.

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I didn't realize that Teyners had a cafe. The sandwich on the right pretty much changed my definition of what a cheese sandwich could be. It was a Stilton and Cranberry on incredibly fresh bread. I quickly ate it before the dinosaur on my table had any idea of how good it was.

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The Franz Hals Museum is located in a large house that used to serve the poor contemporaneous of the life of the influential painter of group portraits and Flemish life in the 17th Century. Several of his large group portraits were located in the museum, but I liked the Hals a lot, because it was mostly empty when I was there on a Thursday afternoon. The museum also lays out the context of the times and art of his peers in Netherlands.

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