From Moralism to Merriment: A Changing Framework for Interpretation

Young Man and Woman in an Inn (1623)

The early seventeenth century in Holland was marked by tension. On one hand, it was a time of great economic growth and prosperity. The expansion of the middle and upper classes led to increased spending, with festivities as one outlet for this wealth. On the other hand, this period also fell at the end of the Protestant Reformation. The Dutch Reformed Church had experienced significant growth in the decades preceding Hals' career, having gained particular political traction as a force of oppostion to the Catholic Spanish regime that had controlled Holland. The early Dutch Reformed Church was heavily influenced by Calvinist Theology and developed into a conservative influence in Dutch Society.

With regard to this 'tension' in our understanding of Dutch Republican society, the interpretations of Hals' early genre works have largely shifted over time. Early interprations relied heavily on the Reformed Church's side of this tension, claiming that Hals' intention was to depict his celebrating subjects in a moralizing way such that he was condemning their festive experiences. As a more complete understanding of Holland during the Dutch republic emerged in Historical discourse, interpretations have moved away from this moralizing approach. Contemporary interpretations of the works openly embrace a celebratory approach, proposing that Hals' intention was not to judge but to honor the experiences of his subjects.

The academic discourse around Young Man and Woman in an Inn in particular provides an example of this shift in interpretations. Art historian Wilhelm Valentiner’s Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde, published in 1923, is likely the most cited academic work that takes a moralizing approach to Hals’ work. Although the book has not been translated from German, Barbara Haeger summarizes Valentiner’s views in her article Frans Hals so-called Jonker Ramp and his Sweetheart Reconsidered. As Haeger’s title alludes to, sometime in the eighteenth century, the male figure in the painting was identified as Pieter Ramp, a young man in Hals’ circle, due to his resemblance to the depiction of Ramp in Hals’ The Officers of the St Adrian Militia Company. In Frans Hals, des Meisters Gemälde, Valentiner rejects this assertion, claiming that the painting is instead meant to depict the Prodigal Son from the Gospel of Luke. Reading the woman in the painting as a spontaneous lover or even a prostitute, Valentiner understands the painting as depicting how excessive drinking and lewdness, though producing such moments of joy, are ultimately sins that should be atoned for and regretted. This view exemplifies the earlier interpretations of Hal’s genre works as condemning rather than celebrating the festive experiences of the subjects and even serving as a sort of warning to the viewer. Valentiner's views had a significant impact on studies of Hals' work, as the the title The Prodigal Son has frequently been used to refer to the painting.

Cover of W.D. Hooft's play The Contemporary Prodigal Son

Following the Publication of des Meisters Gemälde, other art historians responded and added to Valentiner's reading of the painiting. In his 1970 monograph on Hals, Seymour Slive analyzes the painting’s details in the context of  Prodigal Son depictions from Hals’ time. Focusing on the male subject’s raised glass and the dog in the corner of the frame, Slive points to possible inspiration from the print cover of W.D. Hooft’s play The Contemporary Prodigal Son. This cover displays strikingly similar features to Hal’s painting: the Prodigal Son lifts his glass up in a tavern, a woman at both his sides and a dog stalking in the corner.

A contemporary perspective on the painting can be seen in Frans-Willem Korsten's chapter in A Dutch Republican Baroque. Regarding analysis of Young man and Woman in an Inn at the formal level, Korsten disagrees with the traditional moralizing approach which argues that the composition accentuates the wine glass the male figure holds. Korsten argues that the lines that accent the composition, including those that extend from the dog to the man and from the gazes of both figures, point not toward the glass but toward some other entity beyond the frame, beyond even the viewer—the object of their delight. Korsten sets this formal analysis as the point of departure for his main argument. Korsten acknowledges that Young man and Woman in an Inn, like many of Hals’ paintings, undoubtedly affects us, but rejects the notion that it is meant to affect us within a strictly moralizing framework. Instead, Korsten proposes the interpretation that the painting celebrates the couple’s moment of bliss. Considering also the comic element of the painting, similar to that in Hals’ Laughing Cavalier, Korsten suggests that the painting evokes a distinctly comedic bliss, arguing that this quality is characteristic of the Dutch Republic and the art it produced.