Frans Hals, Dutch
“I Just Found These on the Couch. Listen, I Don’t Mind If Your Proctologist Friend Comes Over. But Please Ask Him To Take His Stuff With Him When He Leaves,” 1630
Oil on canvas
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Info about this artist is pointed to in my comment and reply at another blog entry.
/// Here a corpulent bearded man stands.
As we watch, his huge belly expands.
Frans Hals certainly loves
to show men holding gloves.
Was he proud he knew how to paint hands?
/// In a great many similar cases,
Hals paints cloth framing bare hands and faces.
If a sitter insists,
“Show my neck and my wrists,”
they would both be condemned as disgraces.
/// Countless Dutchmen were posed this same way.
What did unworn gloves try to convey?
“I’m not ruthless, you scoff?
Look, the gloves are now off!
Will I throw down the gauntlet? I may.”
/// When Franz painted this smug, puffed-up male,
he was sparing in showing detail.
The bare background is flat.
We assume the man’s fat;
shapeless clothing could cover a whale.
/// Though his body is flabby and round,
in a fight he’ll be standing his ground.
Those who laugh at his heft
should watch out for his left;
he will gladly “throw his weight around.”
/// Here in Haarlem, it’s not circumstantial
that the burghers portrayed had financial
skills which garnered them wealth.
Obese men risk their health,
but we have to admit he’s substantial.
/// Or, perhaps overweight was no struggle.
Did this man, to grow rich, have to juggle
strict import-export rules?
To get goods past the fools,
his loose “fat-suit” would help him to smuggle.