Van Campen Family Portrait in a Landscape (left half)

Gijsbert Claesz van Campen sold cloth in Haarlem and had served as dean of the merchants' guild. In the 1620s he commissioned Frans Hals to paint the entire household, himself, his wife and ten children, out in a landscape. It was Hals's first family group and the largest picture he ever made, close to 3.8 metres across. Then the family kept growing. Around 1628 another Haarlem painter, Salomon de Bray, was brought in to extend the canvas on the left and fit in a new baby, and that extension sits inside this fragment. Later in the century the painting was cut apart, most likely because it no longer fitted a wall, and the pieces went their separate ways. The centre is in Brussels, the right-hand fragment is in a private collection, and about a fifth of the original is still unaccounted for.