Hals and Rembrandt Side by Side for the First Time: Haarlem's Frans Hals Museum Opens Hals–Rembrandt
Frans Hals and Rembrandt were the two great portrait painters of the Dutch Golden Age, and for the first time an exhibition is devoted entirely to the two of them together. Hals–Rembrandt opened at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem on Friday 6 November 2026 and runs until 28 February 2027. Its star loan is Rembrandt’s Syndics. The picture below is our vintage poster of that painting; the original is shown further down.
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What: Hals–Rembrandt, the first exhibition devoted entirely to Frans Hals and Rembrandt together
Where: Frans Hals Museum, Groot Heiligland 62, Haarlem, the Netherlands
When: 6 November 2026 – 28 February 2027 (time slots must be booked)
What’s on show: 19 paintings, 11 by Hals and 8 by Rembrandt, including five loans from the Rijksmuseum
Section: Museums & Exhibitions
What’s on show
According to the museum, the exhibition is small and intimate on purpose: nineteen paintings, hung in pairs so that visitors can compare how each master solved the same problem, such as how to paint a child, a laugh, music or a group of officials around a table. Six of the Hals paintings come from the museum’s own collection, the largest in the world, and the rest are loans that have never been shown together before.
The Rijksmuseum has lent five paintings. The highlight is Rembrandt’s Syndics of 1662, which hangs beside Hals’s Regents of the St Elisabeth Hospital, so that visitors can compare two great portraits of officials at work. Rembrandt’s portrait of Haesje van Cleyburg (1634) is paired with Hals’s Cornelia Voogt (1631), and his Johannes Wtenbogaert (1633) with a Hals Portrait of a Man lent by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and restored especially for the show. The Mauritshuis has lent Rembrandt’s small Laughing Man (about 1629–30), which meets Hals’s Laughing Boy with a Flute from Schwerin, Rembrandt’s Titus at a Lectern (1655) is shown with two paintings of fishermen’s children, and his early Music Party (1626) with Hals’s Children Playing Music (about 1628). The Six Collection has lent Rembrandt’s Girl in a Picture Frame of 1641.
Why it matters
Hals and Rembrandt are often mentioned in the same breath, yet they had never been the subject of a joint exhibition. Both used loose, visible brushstrokes and both painted ordinary people as well as rich patrons, but they worked differently: Rembrandt built up his pictures slowly, layer upon layer, while Hals worked quickly and surely, so that his sitters seem caught in a snapshot. The museum notes that it is not known whether the two influenced each other directly. Hals lived in Haarlem and Rembrandt in Amsterdam, only about twenty kilometres apart, and both were famous in their lifetimes, so they were probably aware of each other’s work.
The painting behind the story
The Syndics, known in Dutch as De Staalmeesters, shows the five sampling officials of the Amsterdam drapers’ guild who served from Good Friday 1661 to Good Friday 1662, with their hatless servant behind them. Their job was to check the quality of dyed cloth against samples and to mark each batch with lead seals. Rembrandt seats them around a table covered with a rich red carpet and makes them look up from their book as if someone has just walked into the room: we are that someone. It was his last great group portrait. For Rembrandt’s most famous group portrait of all, read The Night Watch by Rembrandt; for another Dutch Golden Age painting that has just been recovered, see our story on the Orléans museum’s recovered Duyster.
Hang Rembrandt’s Syndics — five officials, one red carpet and a look that follows you round the room — as a vintage art poster from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
Choose your size and frame →See the vintage poster collection →License this image →
Hang Rembrandt’s group portrait as he painted it, as a print, canvas or framed print from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
Choose your size and frame →Hals’s Merry Drinker as a vintage poster →The Night Watch as a vintage poster →Printed and shipped by Fine Art America · 30-day money-back guarantee
💬 Over to you: Hals or Rembrandt: whose portraits feel more alive to you? And where in the world are you reading from? Tell us in the comments.
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