Frans Hals Museum

The Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem is housed in a picturesque building, originally constructed as an alms house old men. The museum is named after Frans Hals, who lived and worked in Haarlem and was one of the most famous and innovative painters of the Golden Age. His phenomenal style is superbly displayed in his masterly, vibrant portraits of civic guadsmen and regents. The museum has the largest collection of Frans Hals paintings in the world, alongside portraits, still lifes, genre scenes, landscapes and group portraits of civic guardsmen and regents by other celebrated Haarlem artists of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, among them Maerten van Heemskerck, Cornelis vna Haarlem, Hendrick Goltzius, Pieter Claesz, Jacob van Ruisdael, Judith Leyster and Pieter Saenredam. This book explores the masterpieces in the museum's collection.